THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

SANTA  BARBARA 

COLLEGE  OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

PRESENTED  BY 


MR. AND  MRS.R.W.VAUGHAN 


THE   WRACK    OF    THE    STORM 


THE  WORKS  OF   MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 

ESSAYS 

The  Treasure  of  the  Humble 

Wisdom  and  Destiny 

The  Life  of  the  Bee 

The  Buried  Temple 

The  Double  Garden 

The  Measure  of  the  Hours 

On  Emerson,  and  Other  Essays 

Our   Eternity 

The  Unknown  Guest 

The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 


PLAYS 

Sister   Beatrice,  and  Ardiane  and  Barbe  Bleue 

JOYZELLE,    AND    MoNNA    VANNA 

The   Blue   Bird,   A  Fairy  Play 

Mary  Magdalene 

Pelleas  and  Melisande,  and  Other  Plays 

Princess   Maleine 

The  Intruder,  and  Other  Plays 

Aglavaine  and   Selysette 

HOLIDAY  EDITIONS 

Our  Friend  the  Dog 

The  Swarm 

The  Intelligence  of  the  Flowers 

Death 

Thoughts    from    Maeterlinck 

The   Blue   Bird 

The  Life  of  the  Bee 

News  of  Spring  and  Other  Nature  Studies 

Poems 


The 
Wrack  of  the  Storm 

BY 

MAURICE  MAETERLINCK 

Translated  by 
ALEXANDER  TEIXEIRA  DE  MATTOS 


€ 


NEW  YORK 

DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 
1916 


Copyright,  191 6 
By  Dodd,  Mead  and  Company,  Inc. 


53  3 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
SANTA  BARBARA  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 


author's  PREFACE 


The  reader  taking  up  this  volume  will,  for 
the  first  time  in  the  work  of  one  who 
hitherto  had  cursed  no  man,  find  words  of 
hatred  and  malediction.  I  would  gladly 
have  avoided  them,  for  I  hold  that  he  who 
takes  upon  himself  to  write  pledges  himself 
to  say  nothing  that  can  derogate  from  the 
respect  and  love  which  we  owe  to  all  men. 
I  have  had  to  utter  these  words;  and  I  am 
as  much  surprised  as  saddened  at  what  I 
have  been  constrained  to  say  by  the  force 
of  events  and  of  truth.  I  loved  Ger- 
many and  numbered  friends  there,  who 
now,  dead  or  living,  are  alike  dead  to  me. 
I  thought  her  great  and  upright  and  gen- 
erous; and  to  me  she  was  ever  kindly  and 
hospitable.  But  there  are  crimes  that  oblit- 
erate the  past  and  close  the  future.    In  re- 

5 


Author's  Preface 

jecting  hatred  I  should  have  shown  myself 
a  traitor  to  love. 

I  tried  to  lift  myself  above  the  fray; 
but,  the  higher  I  rose,  the  more  I  saw  of 
the  madness  and  the  horror  of  it,  of  the 
justice  of  one  cause  and  the  infamy  of  the 
other.  It  is  possible  that  one  day,  when 
time  has  wearied  remembrance  and  re- 
stored the  ruins,  wise  men  will  tell  us  that 
we  were  mistaken  and  that  our  standpoint 
was  not  lofty  enough;  but  they  will  say  it 
because  they  will  no  longer  know  what  we 
know,  nor  will  they  have  seen  what  we 
have  seen. 

Maurice  Maeterlinck. 

Nice,  191 6. 


translator's  note 

The  present  volume  contains,  in  the 
chronological  order  in  which  they  were  pro- 
duced, all  the  essays  published  and  all  the 
speeches  delivered  by  M.  Maeterlinck  since 
the  beginning  of  the  war,  upon  which,  as 
will  be  perceived,  each  one  of  them  has  a 
direct  bearing.  They  are  printed  as  writ- 
ten; and  they  throw  an  interesting  light 
upon  the  successive  phases  of  the  author's 
psychology  during  the  Titanic  and  hideous 
struggle  that  has  affected  the  mental  atti- 
tude of  us  all. 

In  Italy  forms  the  preface  to  M.  Jules 
Destree's  book,  En  Italie  avant  la  guerre, 
iq  14-15.  Of  the  remaining  essays,  some 
have  appeared  in  various  English  and 
American  periodicals;  others  are  now 
printed  in  translation  for  the  first  time. 

7 


Translator's  Note 

I  have  also  had  M.  Maeterlinck's  leave 
to  include  in  this  volume  his  first  published 
work,  The  Massacre  of  the  Innocents. 
This  powerful  sketch  in  the  Flemish  man- 
ner saw  the  light  originally  in  the  Pleiade, 
in  1886,  and  may  at  the  present  time,  to 
use  the  author's  own  words  in  a  note  to  my- 
self, be  regarded  as  "a  sort  of  vague  sym- 
bolic prophecy."  An  English  version  by 
Mrs.  Edith  Wingate  Rinder  was  printed  in 
the  Dome  in  1899;  another  has  since  been 
issued  by  an  English  and  by  an  American 
firm  of  publishers;  but  the  only  authorized 
translation  to  appear  in  book  form  is  that 
now  added  as  an  epilogue  to  The  Wrack  of 
the  Storm. 

Alexander  Teixeira  de  Mattos. 
Chelsea,  19 16. 


CONTENTS 


AUTHOR S    PREFACE 

translator's  NOTE 

I  AFTER  THE   VICTORY 

II  KING  ALBERT 

III  THE    HOSTAGE    CITIES 

IV  TO  SAVE  FOUR  CITIES 
V  PRO    PATRIA:    I      . 

VI     HEROISM 

VII     PRO    PATRIA:    II    . 
VIII     PRO    PATRIA:    III 

ix   Belgium's  flag  day 

X     ON  THE  DEATH  OF  A  LITTLE 
SOLDIER         .... 
XI     THE   HOUR  OF  DESTINY    . 
XII     IN  ITALY  .... 

XIII  ON  REREADING  THUCYDIDES 

XIV  THE  DEAD  DO  NOT  DIE       . 

9 


PAGE 

5 

7 
ii 

21 

3i 
37 
45 
59 
75 
89 
109 

117 

131 

147 
161 

179 


Contents 

PAGE 

XV     IN  MEMORIAM        .        .        .        .  191 
XVI     SUPERNATURAL  COMMUNICA- 
TIONS  IN  WAR-TIME       .        .  197 
XVII     EDITH   CAVELL       .        .        .        .  217 
XVIII     THE  LIFE  OF  THE  DEAD    .        .  229 
XIX     THE  WAR  AND  THE  PROPHETS  24 1 
XX     THE    WILL   OF    EARTH       .        .  257 

XXI     FOR  POLAND 27 1 

XXII     THE  MIGHT  OF  THE  DEAD        .  279 

XXIII  WHEN  THE  WAR  IS  OVER  .  29  I 

XXIV  THE  MASSACRE  OF  THE  INNO- 

CENTS      303 


10 


AFTER      THE      VICTORY 


THE  WRACK  OF  THE  STORM 

I 

AFTER   THE    VICTORY1 

I 

AT  THESE  moments  of  tragedy,  none 
should  be  allowed  to  speak  who  can- 
not shoulder  a  rifle,  for  the  written  word 
seems  so  monstrously  useless,  so  over- 
whelmingly trivial,  in  front  of  this  mighty 
drama  which  shall  for  a  long  time,  it  may 
be  for  ever,  free  mankind  from  the  scourge 
of  war:  the  one  scourge  among  all  that 
cannot  be  excused,  that  cannot  be  explained, 
since  alone  among  all  it  issues  entire  from 
the  hands  of  man. 

2 
But  it  is  while  this  scourge  is  upon  us, 
while  we  have  our  being  in  its  very  centre, 

iTranslated   by  Alfred  Sutro. 

13 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

that  we  shall  do  well  to  balance  the  guilt 
of  those  who  have  committed  this  inexpi- 
able crime.  It  is  now,  while  we  are  in  the 
thick  of  the  horror,  undergoing  it,  feeling 
it,  that  we  have  the  energy,  the  clear- 
sightedness needed  to  judge  it;  from  the 
depths  of  the  most  fearful  injustice  justice 
is  best  perceived.  When  the  hour  shall 
have  come  for  settling  accounts — and  it 
will  not  long  delay — we  shall  have  for- 
gotten much  of  what  we  have  suffered  and 
a  blameworthy  pity  will  creep  over  us  and 
cloud  our  eyes.  This  is  the  moment, 
therefore,  for  us  to  frame  our  inexorable 
resolution.  After  the  final  victory,  when 
the  enemy  is  crushed — as  crushed  he  will 
be — efforts  will  be  made  to  enlist  our  sym- 
pathy, to  move  us  to  pity.  We  shall  be  told 
that  the  unfortunate  German  people  were 
merely  the  victims  of  their  monarch  and 
their  feudal  caste;  that  no  blame  attaches 
to  the  Germany  we  know,  which  is  so  sym- 

14 


After  the  Victory 

pathetic  and  so  cordial — the  Germany  of 
quaint  old  houses  and  open-hearted  greet- 
ing, the  Germany  that  sits  under  its  lime- 
trees  beneath  the  clear  light  of  the  moon — 
but  only  to  Prussia,  hateful,  arrogant  Prus- 
sia; that  the  homely,  peace-loving,  Bavar- 
ian, the  genial  and  hospitable  dwellers  on 
the  banks  of  the  Rhine,  the  Silesian  and 
Saxon  and  I  know  not  who  besides — for  all 
these  will  suddenly  have  become  whiter 
than  snow  and  more  inoffensive  than  the 
sheep  in  an  English  fold — that  they  all 
have  merely  obeyed,  have  been  compelled 
to  obey  orders  which  they  detested  but 
were  unable  to  resist.  We  are  face  to  face 
with  reality  now ;  let  us  look  at  it  well  and 
pronounce  our  sentence;  for  this  is  the 
moment  when  we  hold  the  proofs  in  our 
hands,  when  the  elements  of  crime  are  hot 
before  us  and  shout  out  the  truth  that  soon 
will  fade  from  our  memory.  Let  us  tell 
ourselves  now,  therefore,  now,  that  all  that 

is 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

we  shall  be  told  hereafter  will  be  false; 
and  let  us  unflinchingly  adhere  to  what  we 
decide  at  this  moment,  when  the  glare  of 
the  horror  is  on  us 

3 

It  is  not  true  that  in  this  gigantic  crime 
there  are  innocent  and  guilty,  or  degrees 
of  guilt.  They  stand  on  one  level,  all 
those  who  have  taken  part  in  it.  The 
German  from  the  North  has  no  more  spe- 
cial craving  for  blood  and  outrage  than  he 
from  the  South  has  special  tenderness  or 
pity.  It  is,  very  simply,  the  German,  from 
one  end  of  his  country  to  the  other,  who 
stands  revealed  as  a  beast  of  prey  which 
the  firm  will  of  our  planet  finally  repudiates. 
We  have  here  no  wretched  slaves  dragged 
along  by  a  tyrant  king  who  alone  is  respon- 
sible. Nations  have  the  government  which 
they  deserve,  or  rather,  the  government 
which  they  have  is  truly  no  more  than  the 

16 


After  the  Victory 

magnified  and  public  projection  of  the  pri- 
vate morality  and  mentality  of  the  nation. 
If  eighty  million  innocent  people  select  and 
support  a  monstrous  king,  those  eighty  mil- 
lion innocent  people  merely  expose  the  in- 
herent falseness  and  superficiality  of  their 
innocence;  and  it  is  the  monster  they 
maintain  at  their  head  who  stands  for  all 
that  is  true  in  their  nature,  because  it  is  he 
who  represents  the  eternal  aspirations  of 
their  race,  which  lie  far  deeper  than  their 
apparent  and  transient  virtues.  Let  there 
be  no  suggestion  of  error,  of  having  been 
led  astray,  of  an  intelligent  people  having 
been  tricked  or  misled.  No  nation  can  be 
deceived  that  does  not  wish  to  be  deceived; 
and  it  is  not  intelligence  that  Germany 
lacks.  In  the  sphere  of  intellect  such  things 
are  not  possible;  nor  in  the  region  of  en- 
lightened, reflecting  will.  No  nation  per- 
mits herself  to  be  coerced  to  the  one  crime 
that  man  cannot  pardon.     It  is  of  her  own 

17 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

accord  that  she  hastens  towards  it;  her 
chief  has  no  need  to  persuade,  it  is  she 
who  urges  him  on. 

4 

We  have  forces  here  quite  different  from 
those  on  the  surface,  forces  that  are  secret, 
irresistible  and  profound.  It  is  these  that 
we  must  judge,  these  that  we  must  crush 
under  our  heel,  once  and  for  all ;  for  they 
are  the  only  ones  that  will  not  be  im- 
proved or  softened  or  brought  into  line  by 
experience  or  progress,  or  even  by  the  bit- 
terest lesson.  They  are  unalterable  and  im- 
movable, their  springs  lie  far  beneath  hope 
or  influence;  and  they  must  be  destroyed  as 
we  destroy  a  nest  of  wasps,  since  we  know 
that  these  never  can  change  into  a  nest 
of  bees.  And,  even  though  individually 
and  singly  the  Germans  were  all  innocent 
and  merely  led  astray,  they  would  be  none 

the  less  guilty  in  the  mass.     This  is  the 

18 


After  the  Victory 

guilt  that  counts,  that  alone  is  actual  and 
real,  because  it  lays  bare,  underneath  their 
superficial  innocence,  the  subconscious  cri- 
minality of  all. 

5 

No  influence  can  prevail  on  the  uncon- 
scious or  the  subconscious.  It  never 
evolves.  Let  there  come  a  thousand  years 
of  civilization,  a  thousand  years  of  peace, 
with  all  possible  refinements  of  art  and 
education,  the  subconscious  element  of  the 
German  spirit,  which  is  its  unvarying  ele- 
ment, will  remain  absolutely  the  same  as 
it  is  to-day  and  would  declare  itself,  when 
the  opportunity  came,  under  the  same  a- 
spect,  with  the  same  infamy.  Through  the 
whole  course  of  history,  two  distinct  will- 
powers have  been  noticed  that  would  seem 
to  be  the  opposed,  elemental  manifesta- 
tions of  the  spirit  of  our  globe,  the  one 
seeking  only  evil,  injustice,  tyranny  and  suf- 

19 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

fering,  while  the  other  strives  for  liberty, 
the  right,  radiance  and  joy.  These  two 
powers  stand  once  again  face  to  face;  our 
opportunity  is  now  to  annihilate  the  one 
that  comes  from  below.  Let  us  know  how 
to  be  pitiless  that  we  may  have  no  more 
need  for  pity.  It  is  a  measure  of  organic 
defence.  It  is  essential  that  the  modern 
world  should  stamp  out  Prussian  militar- 
ism as  it  would  stamp  out  a  poisonous  fun- 
gus that  for  half  a  century  had  disturbed 
and  polluted  its  days.  The  health  of  our 
planet  is  in  question.  To-morrow  the 
United  States  of  Europe  will  have  to  take 
measures  for  the  convalescence  of  the 
earth. 


20 


KING     ALB  ERT 


II 

KING    ALBERT 
I 

OF  all  the  heroes  of  this  stupendous 
war,  heroes  who  will  live  in  the 
memory  of  man,  one  assuredly  of  the  most 
unsullied,  one  of  those  whom  we  can  never 
love  enough,  is  the  great  young  king  of  my 
little  country. 

He  was  indeed  at  the  critical  hour  the 
appointed  man,  the  man  for  whom  every 
heart  was  waiting.  With  sudden  beauty 
he  embodied  the  mighty  voice  of  his  people. 
He  stood,  upon  the  moment,  for  Belgium, 
revealed  unto  herself  and  unto  others.  He 
had  the  wonderful  good  fortune  to  realize 
and  bestow  a  conscience  in  one  of  those 
dread  hours  of  tragedy  and  perplexity 
when  the  best  of  consciences  waver. 

23 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

Had  he  not  been  at  hand,  there  is  no 
doubt  but  that  all  would  have  happened 
differently;  and  history  would  have  lost  one 
of  her  fairest  and  noblest  pages.  Certainly 
Belgium  would  have  been  loyal  and  true  to 
her  word;  and  any  government  would 
have  been  swept  away,  pitilessly  and  irre- 
sistibly, by  the  indignation  of  a  people  that 
had  never,  however  far  we  probe  into  the 
past,  played  false.  But  there  would  have 
been  much  of  that  confusion  and  irresolu- 
tion inevitable  in  a  host  suddenly  threat- 
ened with  disaster.  There  would  have  been 
vain  talking,  mistaken  measures,  excusable 
but  irreparable  vacillations;  and,  above  all, 
the  much-needed  words,  the  precise  and 
final  words,  would  not  have  been  spoken 
and  the  deeds,  than  which  we  can  picture 
none  more  resolute,  none  greater,  would 
not  have  been  done  at  the  right  moment. 

Thanks  to  the  king,  the  peerless  act 
shines  forth  and  is  maintained  complete, 

24 


King  Albert 

unfaltering;  and  the  path  of  heroism  is 
straight  and  clearly  defined  and  splendid  as 
that  of  Thermopylae  indefinitely  extended. 

2 
But  what  he  has  suffered,  what  he  suffers 
day  by  day  only  those  can  understand  who 
have  had  the  privilege  of  access  to  this 
hero :  the  most  sensitive  and  the  gentlest  of 
men,  silent  and  reserved;  a  man  of  con- 
trolled emotions,  modest  with  a  timidity 
that  is  at  once  baffling  and  delightful; 
loving  his  people  less  as  a  father  loves  his 
children  than  as  a  son  loves  his  adoring 
mother.  Of  all  that  cherished  kingdom, 
his  pride  and  his  joy,  the  seat  of  his  happi- 
ness, the  centre  of  his  love  and  his  security, 
there  is  left  intact  but  a  handful  of  cities, 
which  are  threatened  at  every  moment  by 
the  foulest  invader  that  the  world  has  ever 
borne. 

All  the  others — so  quaint  or  so  beautiful, 
so  bright,  so  serene,  happy  to  be  there,  so 

25 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

inoffensive — jewels  in  the  crown  of  Peace, 
models  of  pure  and  upright  family  life, 
homes  of  loyal  and  dutiful  industry,  of 
ready,  ever-smiling  geniality,  with  the  na- 
tural welcome,  the  ever-proffered  hand  and 
the  ever-open  heart :  all  the  others  are  dead 
cities,  of.  which  not  one  stone  is  left  upon 
another;  and  the  very  country-side,  one  of 
the  fairest  in  this  world,  with  its  gentle 
pastures,  is  now  no  more  than  one  vast  field 
of  horror. 

Treasures  have  perished  that  were  num- 
bered among  the  noblest  and  dearest  pos- 
sessions of  mankind;  monuments  have  dis- 
appeared which  nothing  can  replace;  and 
the  half  of  a  nation,  among  all  nations  the 
most  attached  to  its  old  simple  habits,  its 
humble  homes,  is  at  present  wandering 
along  the  roads  of  Europe.  Thousands  of 
innocent  people  have  been  massacred;  and 
of  those  who  remain  nearly  all  are  doomed 

to  poverty  and  hunger. 

26 


King  Albert 

But  that  remainder  has  but  one  soul, 
which  has  taken  refuge  in  the  spacious  soul 
of  its  king.  Not  a  murmur,  not  a  word 
of  reproach!  But  yesterday  a  town  of 
thirty  thousand  inhabitants  received  the  or- 
der to  forsake  its  white  houses,  its  churches, 
its  ancient  streets  and  squares,  the  scene  of 
a  light-hearted  and  industrious  life.  The 
thirty  thousand  inhabitants,  women  and 
children  and  old  men,  set  forth  to  seek  an 
uncertain  refuge  in  a  neighbouring  city, 
which  is  threatened  almost  as  directly  as 
their  own  and  which  to-morrow,  it  may  be, 
must  in  its  turn  set  forth,  but  whither  none 
can  say,  for  the  country  is  so  small  that 
its  boundaries  are  quickly  reached,  its  shel- 
ter soon  exhausted. 

No  matter :  they  obey  in  silence  and  one 

and  all  approve  and  bless  their  sovereign. 

He  did  what  had  to  be  done,  what  every 

one  in  his  place  would  have  done;  and, 

though  they  are  all  suffering  as  no  people 

27 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

has  suffered  since  the  barbarous  invasions 
of  the  earliest  ages,  they  know  that  he  suf- 
fers more  than  any  of  them,  for  in  him 
ail  their  sorrows  find  a  goal;  in  him  they 
are  reflected  and  enhanced.  They  do  not 
even  harbour  the  idea  that  they  might  have 
been  saved  by  a  sacrifice  of  honour.  They 
draw  no  distinction  between  duty  and  des- 
tiny. To  them  that  duty,  with  its  fright- 
ful consequences,  seems  as  inevitable  as  a 
natural  force  against  which  we  cannot  even 
dream  of  struggling,  so  great  is  it  and  so 
invincible. 

3 
Here   is   an  example   of   the   collective 

bravery  of  nameless  heroes,  an  ingenuous 

and    almost    unconscious    courage,    which 

rivals  and  at  times  exceeds  the  most  exalted 

deeds  in  legend  and  history,  for  since  the 

days  of  the  great  martyrs  men  have  never 

suffered  death  more  simply  for  a  simple 

idea. 

28 


King  Albert 

And,  if  amid  the  anguish  of  our  struggle 
it  were  seemly  to  speak  of  aught  but  tears 
and  lamentations,  we  should  find  a  mag- 
nificent consolation  in  the  spectacle  of  the 
unexpected  heroism  that  suddenly  sur- 
rounds us  on  every  side.  It  may  well  be 
said  that  never  in  the  memory  of  mankind 
have  men  sacrificed  their  lives  with  such 
zest,  such  self-abnegation,  such  enthusiasm; 
and  that  the  immortal  virtues  which  to  this 
day  have  uplifted  and  preserved  the  flower 
of  the  human  race  have  never  shone  more 
brilliantly,  never  manifested  greater  power, 
energy  or  youth. 


29 


THE     HOSTAGE     CITIES 


Ill 

THE     HOSTAGE    CITIES 

I 

THANKS  to  the  heroism  of  the  Allies, 
the  hour  is  approaching  when  the 
hordes  of  William  the  Madman  will  quit 
the  soil  of  afflicted  Belgium. 

After  what  they  have  done  in  cold  blood, 
what  excesses,  what  disasters  must  we  not 
expect  of  the  last  convulsions  of  their  rage? 
Our  anguish  is  all  the  more  poignant  in  that 
they  are  at  this  moment  fighting  in  the  most 
ancient  and  most  precious  portion  of  Flan- 
ders. Above  all  countries,  this  is  historic 
and  hallowed  land.  They  have  destroyed 
Termonde,  Roulers,  Charleroi,  Mons,  Na- 
mur,  Thielt  and  more  besides;  happy, 
charming  little  towns,  which  will  rise  again 
from  their  ashes,  more  beautiful  than  be- 

33 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

fore.  They  have  annihilated  Louvain  and 
Malines ;  they  have  but  lately  levelled  Dix- 
mude;  their  torches,  their  incendiary 
squirts  and  their  bombs  are  about  to  attack 
Brussels,  Antwerp,  Ghent,  Bruges,  Ypres 
and  Furnes,  which  are  like  so  many  living 
museums,  forming  one  of  the  most  delight- 
ful, delicate  and  fragile  ornaments  of 
Europe.  The  things  which  are  beginning 
here  and  which  may  be  completed  would 
be  irreparable.  They  would  mean  a  loss 
to  our  race  for  which  nothing  could  atone. 
A  quite  peculiar  aspect — familiar,  kindly, 
racy  of  the  soil  and  unique — of  that  beauty 
which  a  long  series  of  comely  human  lives 
is  able  to  acquire  and  to  hoard  would  dis- 
appear for  ever  from  the  face  of  the  earth; 
and  we  cannot,  in  the  trouble  and  confu- 
sion of  these  too  tragic  hours,  realize  the 
extent,  the  meaning  or  the  consequences  of 
such  a  crime. 


34 


Hostage  Cities 

2 

We  have  made  every  sacrifice  without 
complaining;  but  this  would  exceed  all 
measure.  What  can  be  done?  How  are 
we  to  stop  them?  They  seem  to  be  no 
longer  accessible  to  reason  or  to  any  of  the 
feelings  which  men  hold  in  honour;  they 
are  sensible  only  to  blows.  Very  soon,  as 
they  must  know,  we  shall  have  the  power 
to  strike  them  shrewdly.  Why  do  not  the 
Allies,  this  very  day,  swiftly,  while  yet 
there  is  time,  name  so  many  hostage  cities, 
which  would  be  answerable,  stone  for 
stone,  for  the  existence  of  our  own  dear 
towns?  If  Brussels,  for  example,  should 
be  destroyed,  then  Berlin  should  be  razed 
to  the  ground.  If  Antwerp  were  devas- 
tated, Hamburg  would  disappear.  Nu- 
remburg  would  guarantee  Bruges;  Munich 
would  stand  surety  for  Ghent. 

At  the  present  moment,  when  they  are 
feeling    the    wind    of    defeat    that    blows 

35 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

through  their  tattered  standard,  it  is  pos- 
sible that  this  solemn  threat,  officially  pro- 
nounced, would  force  them  to  reflect,  if 
indeed  they  are  still  at  all  capable  of  re- 
flection. It  is  the  only  expedient  that  re- 
mains to  us  and  there  is  no  time  to  be  lost. 
With  certain  adversaries  the  most  barbar- 
ous threats  are  legitimate  and  necessary, 
for  these  threats  speak  the  only  language 
which  they  can  understand.  And  our  child- 
ren must  not  one  day  be  able  to  reproach 
us  with  not  having  attempted  everything — 
even  that  which  is  most  repugnant — to 
save  the  treasures  which  are  theirs  by  right. 


36 


TO     SAVE     FOUR     CITIES 


IV 

TO    SAVE    FOUR    CITIES 
I 

FIRST  Louvain,  Malines,  Termonde, 
Lierre,  Dixmude,  Nieuport  (and  I 
am  speaking  only  of  the  disasters  of  Flan- 
ders) ;  now  Ypres  is  no  more  and  Furnes 
is  half  in  ruins.  By  the  side  of  the  great 
Flemish  cities,  Brussels,  Antwerp,  Ghent 
and  Bruges,  those  vast  and  incomparable 
living  museums  which  have  been  watchfully 
preserved  by  a  whole  people,  a  people 
above  all  others  attached  to  its  traditions, 
they  formed  a  constellation  of  little  towns, 
delightful  and  hospitable,  too  little  known 
to  travellers.  Each  of  them  wore  its  own 
expression,  of  peace,  pleasantness,  innocent 
mirth,  or  meditation.  Each  possessed  its 
treasures,  jealously  guarded:  its  belfries, 
its  churches,  its  canals,  its  old  bridges,  its 

39 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

quiet  convents,  its  ancient  houses,  which 
gave  it  a  special  physiognomy,  never  to  be 
forgotten  by  those  who  had  beheld  it. 

But  the  indisputable  queen  of  these 
beautiful  forsaken  cities  was  Ypres,  with 
its  enormous  market-place,  bordered  by 
little  dwelling-houses  with  stepped  gables, 
and  its  prodigious  market-buildings,  which 
occupied  one  whole  side  of  the  immense 
oblong.  This  market-place  haunted  for 
ever  the  memory  of  those  who  had  seen 
it,  were  it  but  once,  while  waiting  to  change 
trains;  it  was  so  unexpected,  so  magical,  so 
dream-like  almost,  in  its  disproportion  to 
the  rest  of  the  town.  While  the  ancient 
city,  whose  life  had  withdrawn  itself  from 
century  to  century,  was  gradually  shrinking 
all  around  it,  the  Grand'Place  itself  re- 
mained an  immovable,  gigantic,  magnifi- 
cent witness  to  the  might  and  opulence  of 
old,  when  Ypres  was,  with  Ghent  and  Bru- 
ges, one  of  the  three  queens  of  the  western 

40 


To  Save  Four  Cities 

world,  one  of  the  most  strenuous  centres 
of  human  industry  and  activity  and  the 
cradle  ^f  our  great  liberties.  Such  as  it 
was  yesterday — alas,  that  I  cannot  say, 
such  as  it  is  to-day ! — this  square,  with  the 
enormous  but  unspeakably  harmonious 
mass  of  those  market-buildings,  at  once 
powerful  and  graceful,  wild,  gloomy» 
proud,  yet  genial,  was  one,  of  the  most 
wonderful  and  perfect  spectacles  that  could 
be  seen  in  any  town  on  this  old  earth  of 
ours.  While  of  a  different  order  of  ar- 
chitecture, built  of  other  elements  and 
standing  under  sterner  skies,  it  should  have 
been  as  precious  to  man,  as  sacred  and  as 
intangible  as  the  Piazza  di  San  Marco  at 
Venice,  the  Signoria  at  Florence  or  the 
Piazza  del  Duomo  at  Pisa.  It  constituted 
a  peerless  specimen  of  art,  which  at  all 
times  wrung  a  cry  of  admiration  from  the 
most  indifferent,  an  ornament  which  men 
hoped  was  imperishable,  one  of  those  things 

41 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

of  beauty  which,  in  the  words  of  the  poet, 
are  a  joy  forever. 


I  cannot  believe  that  it  no  longer  exists; 
and  yet  in  this  horrible  war  we  have  to 
believe  everything  and,  above  all,  the  worst. 
Now,  fatally  and  inevitably,  it  will  be  the 
turn  of  the  Belfry  of  Bruges;  and  then  the 
tide  of  barbarians  will  rise  against  Ghent 
and  Antwerp  and  Brussels;  and  there  will 
forthwith  disappear  one  of  those  portions 
of  the  world's  surface  in  which  was  hoarded 
the  greatest  wealth  of  beauty  and  of  mem- 
ories and  of  the  stuff  of  history.  We  did 
what  we  could  to  preserve  it;  we  could  do 
no  more.  The  most  heroic  of  armies  are 
powerless  to  prevent  the  bandits  whom  they 
are  driving  back  from  murdering  the 
women  and  children  or  from  deliberately 
and  uselessly  destroying  all  that  they  find 

along  their  path  of  retreat.     There  is  only 

42 


To  Save  Four  Cities 

one  hope  left  us:  the  immediate  and  im- 
perious intervention  of  the  neutral  powers. 
It  is  towards  them  that  we  turn  our  tor- 
tured gaze.  Two  great  nations  notably — 
Italy  and  the  United  States — hold  in  their 
hands  the  fate  of  these  last  treasures,  whose 
loss  would  one  day  be  reckoned  among  the 
heaviest  and  the  most  irreparable  that  have 
been  suffered  in  the  course  of  long  cen- 
turies of  human  civilization.  They  can  do 
what  they  will;  it  is  time  for  them  to  do 
that  which  it  is  no  longer  lawful  to  leave 
undone.  By  its  frantic  lies,  the  beast  from 
over  the  Rhine,  standing  at  bay  and  in  peril 
of  death,  shows  plainly  enough  the  import- 
ance which  it  attaches  to  the  opinion  of 
the  only  nations  which  the  execration  of  all 
that  lives  and  breathes  have  not  yet  armed 
against  it.  It  is  afraid.  It  feels  that  all 
is  crumbling  under  foot,  that  it  is  being 
shunned  and  abandoned.  It  seeks  in  every 
direction  a  glance  that  does  not  curse  it. 
It  must  not,  it  shall  not  find  that  glance. 

43 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

It  is  not  necessary  to  tell  Italy  what 
our  imperilled  cities  are  worth;  for  Italy 
is  preeminently  the  land  of  noble  cities. 

Our  cause  is  her  cause;  she  owes  us  her 
support.  When  a  work  of  beauty  is  de- 
stroyed, her  own  genius  and  her  own  eter- 
nal gods  are  outraged.  As  for  America, 
she  more  than  any  other  country  stands  for 
the  future.  She  should  think  of  the  days 
that  will  follow  after  this  war.  When  the 
great  peace  descends  upon  the  earth,  let 
not  the  earth  be  found  desert  and  robbed 

of  all  its  jewels.  The  places  at  which 
the  earth  is  beautiful  because  of  centuries 
of  effort,  because  of  the  successful  zeal  and 
patience  and  genius  of  a  race,  are  not  so 
many.  This  corner  of  Flanders,  over 
which  death  now  hovers,  is  one  of  those 
consecrated  spots.  Were  it  to  perish,  men 
as  yet  unborn,  men  who  at  last,  perhaps, 
will  achieve  happiness,  would  lack  memor- 
ies and  examples  which  nothing  could  re- 
place. 

44 


PRO     PATRIA:     1 


PRO    PATRIA:    I1 


I 

I  NEED  not  here  recall  the  events  that 
hurled  Belgium  into  the  depths  of  dis- 
tress most  glorious  where  she  is  struggling 
to-day.  She  has  been  punished  as  never 
nation  was  punished  for  doing  her  duty  as 
never  nation  did  before.  She  saved  the 
world  while  knowing  that  she  could  not  be 
saved.  She  saved  it  by  flinging  herself  in 
the  path  of  the  oncoming  barbarians,  by 
allowing  herself  to  be  trampled  to  death 
in  order  to  give  the  defenders  of  justice 
time,  not  to  rescue  her,  for  she  was  well 
aware  that  rescue  could  not  come  in  time, 
but  to  collect  the  forces  needed  to  save  our 
Latin  civilization   from  the  greatest   dan- 

1  Delivered  at  the  Scala  Theatre,  Milan,  30  Novem- 
ber, 1 9 14. 

47 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

ger  that  has  ever  threatened  it.  She  has 
thus  done  this  civilization,  which  is  the  only 
one  whereunder  the  majority  of  men  are 
willing  or  able  to  live,  a  service  exactly 
similar  to  that  which  Greece,  at  the  time  of 
the  great  Asiatic  invasions,  rendered  to  the 
mother  of  this  civilization.  But,  while 
the  service  is  similar,  the  act  surpasses  all 
comparison.  We  may  ransack  history  in 
vain  for  aught  to  approach  it  in  grand- 
eur. The  magnificent  sacrifice  at  Ther- 
mopylae, which  is  perhaps  the  noblest  action 
in  the  annals  of  war,  is  illumined  with  an 
equally  heroic  but  less  ideal  light,  for  it 
was  less  disinterested  and  more  material. 
Leonidas  and  his  three  hundred  Spartans 
were  in  fact  defending  their  homes,  their 
wives,  their  children,  all  the  realities  which 
they  had  left  behind  them.  King  Albert 
and  his  Belgians,  on  the  other  hand,  knew 
full  well  that,  in  barring  the  invader's  road, 
they  were  inevitably  sacrificing  their  homes, 

48 


Pro  Patria:   I 

their  wives  and  their  children.  Unlike  the 
heroes  of  Sparta,  instead  of  possessing  an 
imperative  and  vital  interest  in  fighting, 
they  had  everything  to  gain  by  not  fighting 
and  nothing  to  lose — save  honour.  In  the 
one  scale  were  fire  and  the  sword,  ruin, 
massacre,  the  infinite  disaster  which  we 
see;  in  the  other  was  that  little  word  hon- 
our, which  also  represents  infinite  things, 
but  things  which  we  do  not  see,  or  which 
we  must  be  very  pure  and  very  great  to  see 
quite  clearly.  It  has  happened  now  and 
again  in  history  that  a  man  standing  higher 
than  his  fellows  perceives  what  this  word 
represents  and  sacrifices  his  life  and  the 
life  of  those  whom  he  loves  to  what  he 
perceives ;  and  we  have  not  without  reason 
devoted  to  such  men  a  sort  of  cult  that 
places  them  almost  on  a  level  with  the  gods. 
But  what  had  never  yet  happened — and  I 
say  this  without  fear  of  contradiction  from 
whosoever  cares  to  search  the  memory  of 

49 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

man — is  that  a  whole  people,  great  and 
small,  rich  and  poor,  learned  and  ignorant, 
deliberately  immolated  itself  thus  for  the 
sake  of  an  unseen  thing. 


And  observe  that  we  are  not  discussing 
one  of  those  heroic  resolutions  which  are 
taken  in  a  moment  of  enthusiasm,  when 
man  easily  surpasses  himself,  and  which 
have  not  to  be  maintained  when,  forget- 
ting his  intoxication,  he  lapses  on  the  mor- 
row to  the  dead  level  of  his  everyday  life. 
We  are  concerned  with  a  resolution  that 
has  had  to  be  taken  and  maintained  every 
morning,  for  now  nearly  four  months,  in 
the  midst  of  daily  increasing  distress  and 
disaster.  And  not  only  has  this  resolution 
not  wavered  by  a  hair's  breadth,  but  it 
grows  as  steadily  as  the  national  misfor- 
tune; and  to-day,  when  this  misfortune  is 
reaching  its  full,  the  national  resolution  is 

50 


Pro  Patria:   I 

likewise  attaining  its  zenith.  I  have  seen 
many,  of  my  refugee  fellow-countrymen: 
some  used  to  be  rich  and  had  lost  their  all; 
others  were  poor  before  the  war  and  now 
no  longer  owned  even  what  the  poorest 
own.  I  have  received  many  letters  from 
every  part  of  Europe  where  duty's  exiles 
had  sought  a  brief  instant  of  repose.  In 
them  there  was  lamentation,  as  was  only 
too  natural,  but  not  a  reproach,  not  a  re- 
gret, not  a  word  of  recrimination.  I  did 
not  once  come  upon  that  hopeless  but  ex- 
cusable cry  which,  one  would  think,  might 
so  easily  have  sprung  from  despairing  lips : 

"If  our  king  had  not  done  what  he  did, 
we  should  not  be  suffering  what  we  are 
suffering  to-day." 

The  idea  does  not  even  occur  to  them. 
It  is  as  though  this  thought  were  not  of 
those  which  can  live  in  that  atmosphere 
purified  by  misfortune.  They  are  not  re- 
signed, for  to  be  resigned  means  to  renounce 

5r 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

the  strife,  no  longer  to  keep  up  one's  cour- 
age. They  are  proud  and  happy  in  their 
distress.  They  have  a  vague  feeling  that 
this  distress  will  regenerate  them  after  the 
manner  of  a  baptism  of  faith  and  glory 
and  ennoble  them  for  all  time  in  the  re- 
membrance of  men.  An  unexpected 
breath,  coming  from  the  secret  reserves  of 
the  human  race  and  from  the  summits  of 
the  human  heart,  has  suddenly  passed  over 
their  lives  and  given  them  a  single  soul, 
formed  of  the  same  heroic  substance  as 
that  of  their  great  king. 

3 
They  have  done  what  had  never  before 
been  done;  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  for  the 
happiness  of  mankind  that  no  nation  will 
ever  again  be  called  upon  for  a  like  sacri- 
fice. But  this  wonderful  example  will  not 
be  lost,  even  though  there  be  no  longer  any 
occasion  to  imitate   it.     At  a  time  when 

52 


Pro  Patria:   I 

the  universal  conscience  seemed  about  to 
bend  under  the  weight  of  long  prosperity 
and  selfish  materialism,  suddenly  it  raised 
by  several  degrees  what  we  may  term  the 
political  morality  of  the  world  and  lifted 
it  all  at  once  to  a  height  which  it  had  not 
yet  reached  and  from  which  it  will  never 
again  be  able  to  descend,  for  there  are 
actions  so  glorious,  actions  which  fill  so 
great  a  place  in  our  memory,  that  they 
found  a  sort  of  new  religion  and  definitely 
fix  the  limits  of  the  human  conscience  and 
of  human  loyalty  and  courage. 

They  have  really,  as  I  have  already  said 
and  as  history  will  one  day  establish  with 
greater  eloquence  and  authority  than  mine, 
they  have  really  saved  Latin  civilization. 
They  had  stood  for  centuries  at  the  junc- 
tion of  two  powerful  and  hostile  forms  of 
culture.  They  had  to  choose  and  they  did 
not  hesitate.  Their  choice  was  all  the 
more  significant,  all  the  more  instructive, 

53 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

inasmuch  as  none  was  so  well  qualified  as 
they  to  choose  with  a  full  knowledge  of 
what  they  were  doing.  You  are  all  aware 
that  more  than  half  of  Belgium  is  of  Teu- 
tonic stock.  She  was  therefore,  thanks  to 
her  racial  affinities,  better  able  than  any 
other  to  understand  the  culture  that  was 
being  offered  her,  together  with  the  imputa- 
tion of  dishonour  which  it  included.  She 
understood  it  so  well  that  she  rejected  it 
with  an  outbreak  of  horror  and  disgust  un- 
paralleled in  violence,  spontaneous,  unani- 
mous and  irresistible,  thus  pronouncing  a 
verdict  from  which  there  was  no  appeal 
and  giving  the  world  a  peremptory  lesson 
sealed  with  every  drop  of  her  blood. 

4 
But  to-day  she  is  at  the  end  of  her  re- 
sources.    She  has  exhausted  not  her  cour- 
age but  her  strength.     She  has  paid  with 
all  that  she  possesses  for  the  immense  ser- 

54 


Pro  Patria:   I 

vice  which  she  has  rendered  to  mankind. 
Thousands  and  thousands  of  her  children 
are  dead;  all  her  riches  have  perished; 
almost  all  her  historic  memories,  which 
were  her  pride  and  her  delight,  almost  all 
her  artistic  treasures,  which  were  num- 
bered among  the  fairest  in  this  world,  are 
destroyed  for  ever.  She  is  nothing  more 
than  a  desert  whence  stand  out,  more  or 
less  intact,  four  great  towns  alone,  four 
towns  which  the  Rhenish  hordes,  for  whom 
the  epithet  of  barbarians  is  in  point  of  fact 
too  honourable,  appear  to  have  spared  only 
so  that  they  may  keep  back  one  last  and 
monstrous  revenge  for  the  day  of  the  in- 
evitable rout.  It  is  certain  that  Antwerp, 
Ghent,  Bruges  and  Brussels  are  doomed  be- 
yond recall.  In  particular,  the  admirable 
Grand'place,  the  Hotel  de  Ville  and  the 
Cathedral  at  Brussels  are,  I  know,  under- 
mined: I  repeat,  I  know  it  from  private 
and  trustworthy  testimony  against  which 

55 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

no  denial  can  prevail.  A  spark  will  be 
enough  to  turn  one  of  the  recognized  mar- 
vels of  Europe  into  a  heap  of  ruins  like 
those  of  Ypres,  Malines  and  Louvain. 
Soon  after — for,  short  of  immediate  inter- 
vention, the  disaster  is  as  certain  as  though 
it  were  already  accomplished — Bruges, 
Antwerp  and  Ghent  will  suffer  the  same 
fate;  and  in  a  moment,  as  I  was  saying 
the  other  day,  there  will  vanish  from  sight 
one  of  the  corners  of  this  earth  in  which 
the  greatest  store  of  memories,  of  historic 
matter  and  artistic  beauties  had  been  accu- 
mulated. 

5 
The  time  has  come  to  end  this  foolery  1 
The  time  has  come  for  everything  that 
draws  breath  to  rise  up  against  these  sys- 
tematic, insane  and  stupid  acts  of  destruc- 
tion, perpetrated  without  any  military  ex- 
cuse or  strategic  object.  The  reason  why 
we  are  at  last  uttering  a  great  cry  of  dis- 

56 


Pro  Patria:   I 

tress,  we  who  are  above  all  a  silent  people, 
the  reason  why  we  turn  to  your  mighty  and 
noble  country  is  that  Italy  is  to-day  the 
only  European  power  that  is  still  in  a  posi- 
tion to  stop  the  unchained  brute  on  the 
brink  of  his  crime.  You  are  ready.  You 
have  but  to  stretch  out  a  hand  to  save  us. 
We  have  not  come  to  beg  for  our  lives: 
these  no  longer  count  with  us  and  we  have 
already  offered  them  up.  But,  in  the  name 
of  the  last  beautiful  things  that  the  bar- 
barians have  left  us,  we  come  with  our 
prayers  to  the  land  of  all  beautiful  things. 
It  must  not  be,  it  shall  not  be  that,  on  the 
day  when  at  last  we  return,  not  to  our 
homes,  for  most  of  these  are  destroyed, 
but  to  our  native  soil,  that  soil  is  so  laid 
waste  as  to  have  become  an  unrecognizable 
desert.  You  know  better  than  any  others 
what  memories  mean,  what  masterpieces 
mean  to  a  nation,  for  your  country  is  co- 
vered with  memories  and  masterpieces.     It 

57 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

is  also  the  land  of  justice  and  the  cradle 
of  the  law,  which  is  simply  justice  that  has 
taken  cognizance  of  itself.  On  this  ac- 
count, Italy  owes  us  justice.  And  she 
owes  it  to  herself  to  put  a  stop  to  the  great- 
est iniquity  in  the  annals  of  history,  for  not 
to  put  a  stop  to  it  when  one  has  the  power 
is  almost  tantamount  to  taking  part  in  it. 
It  is  for  Italy  as  much  as  for  France  that 
we  have  suffered.  She  is  the  source,  she 
is  the  very  mother  of  the  ideal  for  which 
we  have  fought  and  for  which  the  last  of 
our  soldiers  are  still  fighting  in  the  last 
of  our  trenches. 


58 


HEROISM 


VI 

HEROISM 
I 

ONE  of  the  consoling  surprises  of  this 
war  is  the  unlooked-for  and,  so  to 
speak,  universal  heroism  which  it  has  re- 
vealed among  all  the  nations  taking  part 
in  it. 

We  were  rather  inclined  to  believe  that 
courage,  physical  and  moral  fortitude,  self- 
denial,  stoicism,  the  renunciation  of  every 
sort  of  comfort,  the  faculty  of  self-sacrifice 
and  the  power  of  facing  death  belonged 
only  to  the  more  primitive,  the  less  happy, 
the  less  intelligent  nations,  to  the  nations 
least  capable  of  reasoning,  of  appreciating 
danger  and  of  picturing  in  their  imagination 
the  dreadful  abyss  that  separates  this  life 
from  the  life  unknown.     We  were  even 

61 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

almost  persuaded  that  war  would  one  day 
cease  for  lack  of  soldiers,  that  is  to  say,  of 
men  foolish  enough  or  unhappy  enough  to 
risk  the  only  absolute  realities — health, 
physical  comfort,  an  unimpaired  body  and, 
above  all,  life,  the  greatest  of  earthly  pos- 
sessions— for  the  sake  of  an  ideal  which, 
like  all  ideals,  is  more  or  less  invisible. 

And  this  argument  seemed  the  more  na- 
tural and  convincing  because,  as  existence 
grew  gentler  and  men's  nerves  more  sen- 
sitive, the  means  of  destruction  by  war 
showed  themselves  more  cruel,  ruthless 
and  irresistible.  It  seemed  more  and  more 
probable  that  no  man  would  ever  again 
endur©  the  infernal  horrors  of  a  battle- 
field and  that,  after  the  first  slaughter,  the 
opposing  armies,  officers  and  men  alike, 
all  seized  with  insuppressible  panic,  would 
turn  their  backs  upon  one  another,  in  si- 
multaneous, supernatural  affright,  and  flee 
from  unearthly  terrors  exceeding  the  most 

62 


Heroism 

monstrous  anticipations  of  those  who  had 
let   them  loose. 

2 

To  our  great  astonishment  the  very  op- 
posite is  now  proclaimed. 

We  realize  with  amazement  that  until 
to-day  we  had  but  an  incomplete  and  inac- 
curate conception  of  man's  courage.  We 
looked  upon  it  as  an  exceptional  virtue  and 
one  which  is  the  more  admired  as  being 
also  the  rarer  the  farther  we  go  back  in 
history.  Remember,  for  instance,  Homer's 
heroes,  the  ancestors  of  all  the  heroes  of 
our  day.  Study  them  closely.  These 
models  of  antiquity,  the  first  professors, 
the  first  masters  of  bravery,  are  not  really 
very  brave.  They  have  a  wholesome 
dread  of  being  hit  or  wounded  and  an  in- 
genuous and  manifest  fear  of  death.  Their 
mighty  conflicts  are  declamatory  and  deco- 
rative but  not  so  very  bloody;  they  in- 
flict more  noise  than  pain  upon  their  ad- 

63 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

versaries,  they  deliver  many  more  words 
than  blows.  Their  defensive  weapons — 
and  this  is  characteristic — are  greatly  su- 
perior to  their  arms  of  offence;  and  death 
is  an  unusual,  unforeseen  and  almost  in- 
decorous event  which  throws  the  ranks  into 
disorder  and  most  often  puts  a  stop  to  the 
combat  or  provokes  a  headlong  flight  that 
seems  quite  natural.  As  for  the  wounds, 
these  are  enumerated  and  described,  sung 
and  deplored  as  so  many  remarkable  phe- 
nomena. On  the  other  hand,  the  most 
discreditable  routs,  the  most  shameful 
panics  are  frequent;  and  the  old  poet  re- 
lates them,  without  condemning  them,  as 
ordinary  incidents  to  be  ascribed  to  the 
gods  and  inevitable  in  any  warfare. 

This  kind  of  courage  is  that  of  all  an- 
tiquity, more  or  less.  We  will  not  linger 
over  it,  nor  delay  to  consider  the  battles  of 
the  Middle  Ages  or  the  Renascence,  in 
which  the  fiercest  hand-to-hand  encounters 

64 


Heroism 

of  the  mercenaries  often  left  not  more  than 
half-a-dozen  victims  on  the  field.  Let  us 
rather  come  straight  to  the  great  wars  of 
the  Empire.  Here  the  courage  displayed 
begins  to  resemble  our  own,  but  with  nota- 
ble differences.  In  the  first  place,  those 
concerned  were  solely  professionals.  We 
see  not  a  whole  nation  fighting,  but  a  dele- 
gation, a  martial  selection,  which,  it  is  true, 
becomes  gradually  more  extensive,  but 
never,  as  in  our  time,  embraces  every  man 
between  eighteen  and  fifty  years  of  age 
capable  of  shouldering  a  weapon.  Again 
— and  above  all — every  war  was  reduced 
to  two  or  three  pitched  battles,  that  is  to 
say,  two  or  three  culminating  moments; 
immense  efforts,  but  efforts  of  a  few 
hours,  or  a  day  at  most,  towards  which 
the  combatants  directed  all  the  vigour  and 
all  the  heroism  accumulated  during  long 
weeks  or  months  of  preparation  and  wait- 
ing.    Afterwards,  whether  the  result  was 

65 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

victory  or  defeat,  the  fighting  was  over; 
relaxation,  respite  and  rest  followed;  men 
went  back,  to  their  homes.  Destiny  must 
not  be  defied  more  than  once;  and  they 
knew  that  in  the  most  terrible  affray  the 
chances  of  escaping  death  were  as  twenty 
to  one. 

3 

Nowadays,  everything  is  changed;  and 
death  itself  is  no  longer  what  it  was.  For- 
merly, you  looked  it  in  the  face,  you  knew 
whence  it  came  and  who  sent  it  to  you.  It 
had  a  dreadful  aspect,  but  one  that  re- 
mained human.  Its  ways  were  not  un- 
known: its  long  spells  of  sleep,  its  brief 
awakenings,  its  bad  days  and  dangerous 
hours.  At  present,  to  all  these  horrors  it 
adds  the  great,  intolerable  fear  of  mystery. 
It  no  longer  has  any  aspect,  no  longer  has 
habits  or  spells  of  sleep  and  it  is  never  still. 
It  is  always  ready,  always  on  the  watch, 

everywhere    present,    scattered,    intangible 

66 


Heroism 

and  dense,  stealthy  and  cowardly,  diffuse, 
all-encompassing,  innumerous,  looming  at 
every  point  of  the  horizon,  rising  from  the 
waters  and  falling  from  the  skies,  inde- 
fatigable, inevitable,  filling  the  whole  of 
space  and  time  for  days,  weeks  and  months 
without  a  minute's  lull,  without  a  second's 
intermission.  Men  live,  move  and  sleep 
in  the  meshes  of  its  fatal  web.  They 
know  that  the  least  step  to  the  right  of  left, 
a  head  bowed  or  lifted,  a  body  bent  or  up- 
right is  seen  by  its  eyes  and  draws  its  thun- 
der. 

Hitherto  we  had  no  example  of  this  pre- 
ponderance of  the  destructive  forces.  We 
should  never  have  believed  that  man's 
nerves  could  resist  so  great  a  trial.  The 
nerves  of  the  bravest  man  are  tempered  to 
face  death  for  the  space  of  a  second,  but 
not  to  live  in  the  hourly  expectation  of 
death  and  nothing  else.  Heroism  was 
once  a  sharp  and  rugged  peak,  reached  for 

67 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

a  moment  but  soon  quitted,  for  mountain- 
peaks  are  not  inhabitable.  To-day  it  is 
a  boundless  plain,  as  uninhabitable  as  the 
peaks;  but  we  are  not  permitted  to  descend 
from  it.  And  so,  at  the  very  moment 
when  man  appeared  most  exhausted  and 
enervated  by  the  comforts  and  vices  of  ci- 
vilization, at  the  moment  when  he  was  hap- 
piest and  therefore  most  selfish,  when,  pos- 
sessing the  minimum  of  faith  and  vainly 
seeking  a  new  ideal,  he  seemed  least  capable 
of  sacrificing  himself  for  an  idea  of  any 
kind,  he  finds  himself  suddenly  confronted 
with  an  unprecedented  danger,  which  he 
is  almost  certain  that  the  most  heroic  na- 
tions of  history  would  not  have  faced  nor 
even  dreamed  of  facing,  whereas  he  does 
not  even  dream  that  it  is  possible  to  do 
aught  but  face  it.  And  let  it  not  be  said 
that  we  had  no  choice,  that  the  danger  and 
the  struggle  were  thrust  upon  us,  that  we 

had  to  defend  ourselves  or  die  and  that  in 

68 


Heroism 

such  cases  there  are  no  cowards.  It  is  not 
true:  there  was,  there  always  has  been, 
there  still  is  a  choice. 

4 

It  is  not  man's  life  that  is  at  stake,  but 
the  idea  which  he  forms  of  the  honour,  the 
happiness  and  the  duties  of  his  life.  To 
save  his  life  he  had  but  to  submit  to  the 
enemy;  the  invader  would  not  have  ex- 
terminated him.  You  cannot  exterminate 
a  great  people;  it  is  not  even  possible  to 
enslave  it  seriously  or  to  inflict  great  sorrow 
upon  it  for  long.  He  had  nothing  to  be 
afraid  of  except  disgrace.  He  did  not  so 
much  as  see  the  infamous  temptation  ap- 
pear above  the  horizon  of  his  most  in- 
stinctive fears;  he  does  not  even  suspect 
that  it  is  able  to  exist;  and  he  will  never 
perceive  it,  whatever  sacrifices  may  yet 
await  him.  We  are  not,  therefore,  speak- 
ing of  a  heroism  that  would  be  but  the  last 

69 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

resource  of  despair,  the  heroism  of  the  ani- 
mal driven  to  bay  and  fighting  blindly  to 
delay  death's  coming  for  a  moment.  No, 
it  is  heroism  freely  donned,  deliberately 
and  unanimously  hailed,  heroism  on  behalf 
of  an  idea  and  a  sentiment,  in  other  words, 
heroism  in  its  clearest,  purest  and  most 
virginal  form,  a  disinterested  and  whole- 
hearted sacrifice  for  that  which  men  regard 
as  their  duty  to  themselves,  to  their  kith 
and  kin,  to  mankind  and  to  the  future.  If 
life  and  personal  safety  were  more  precious 
than  the  idea  of  honour,  of  patriotism  and 
of  fidelity  to  tradition  and  the  race,  there 
was,  I  repeat,  and  there  is  still  a  choice 
to  be  made;  and  never  perhaps  in  any  war 
was  the  choice  easier,  for  never  did  men 
feel  more  free,  never  indeed  were  they 
more  free  to  choose. 

But  this  choice,  as  I  have  said,  did  not 
dare  show  its  faintest  shadow  on  the  lowest 
horizons   of  even   the   most   ignoble   con- 

70 


Heroism 

sciences.  Are  you  quite  sure  that,  in  other 
times  which  we  think  better  and  more  vir- 
tuous than  our  own,  men  would  not  have 
seen  it,  would  not  have  spoken  of  it? 
Can  you  find  a  nation,  even  among  the 
greatest,  which,  after  six  months  of  a  war 
compared  with  which  all  other  wars  seem 
child's-play,  of  a  war  which  threatens  and 
uses  up  all  that  nation's  life  and  all  its 
possessions,  can  you  find,  I  say,  in  history, 
not  an  instance — for  there  is  no  instance — 
but  some  similar  case  which  allows  you  to 
presume  that  the  nation  would  not  have 
faltered,  would  not  at  least,  were  it  but  for 
a  second,  have  looked  down  and  cast  its 
eyes  upon  an  inglorious  peace? 

5 

Nevertheless,  they  seemed  much  stronger 

than  we  are,   all  those  who  came  before 

us.     They  were  rude,  austere,  much  closer 

to  nature,  poor  and  often  unhappy.     They 

7i 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

had  a  simpler  and  a  more  rigid  code  of 
thought;  they  had  the  habit  of  physical 
suffering,  of  hardship  and  of  death.  But  I 
do  not  believe  that  any  one  dares  contend 
that  these  men  would  have  done  what  our 
soldiers  are  now  doing,  that  they  would 
have  endured  what  is  being  endured  all 
around  us.  Are  we  not  entitled  to  con- 
clude from  this  that  civilization,  contrary 
to  what  was  feared,  so  far  from  enervating, 
depraving,  weakening,  lowering  and  dwarf- 
ing man,  elevates  him,  purifies  him, 
strengthens  him,  ennobles  him,  makes  him 
capable  of  acts  of  sacrifice,  generosity  and 
courage  which  he  did  not  know  before? 
The  fact  is  that  civilization,  even  when  it 
seems  to  entail  corruption,  brings  intelli- 
gence with  it  and  that  intelligence,  in  days 
of  trial,  stands  for  potential  pride,  nobility 
and  heroism.  That,  as  I  said  in  the  be- 
ginning, is  the  unexpected  and  consoling 
revelation  of  this  horrible  war:  we  can  rely 

12 


Heroism 

on  man  Implicitly,  place  the  greatest  trust 
in  him,  nor  fear  lest,  in  laying  aside 
his  primitive  brutality,  he  should  lose  his 
manly  qualities.  The  greater  his  progress 
in  the  conquest  of  nature  and  the  greater 
his  apparent  attachment  to  material  wel- 
fare, the  more  does  he  become  capable, 
nevertheless,  unconsciously,  deep  down  in 
the  best  part  of  him,  of  self-detachment 
and  of  self-sacrifice  for  the  common  safety 
and  the  more  does  he  understand  that  he  is 
nothing  when  he  compares  himself  with  the 
eternal  life  of  his  forbears  and  his  children. 
It  was  so  great  a  trial  that  we  dared  not, 
before  this  war,  have  contemplated  it. 
The  future  of  the  human  race  was  at  stake; 
and  the  magnificent  response  that  comes  to 
us  from  every  side  reassures  us  fully  as  to 
the  issue  of  other  struggles,  more  for- 
midable still,  which  no  doubt  await  us 
when  it  will  be  a  question  no  longer  of  fight- 
ing our  fellow-men,  but  rather  of  facing 

73 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

the  more  powerful  and  cruel  of  the  great 
mysterious  enemies  that  nature  holds  in  re- 
serve against  us.  If  it  be  true,  as  I  believe, 
that  humanity  is  worth  just  as  much  as  the 
sum  total  of  latent  heroism  which  it  con- 
tains, then  we  may  declare  that  humanity 
was  never  stronger  nor  more  exemplary 
than  now  and  that  it  is  at  this  moment 
reaching  one  of  its  highest  points  and  capa- 
ble of  braving  everything  and  hoping 
everything.  And  it  is  for  this  reason  that, 
despite  our  present  sadness,  we  are  entitled 
to  congratulate  ourselves  and  to  rejoice. 


74 


PRO       P  ATRIA  :     II 


VII 


PRO   PATRIA:   II1 


I 

MORE  than  three  months  ago,  I  was 
in  one  of  the  grandest  of  your 
cities,  a  city  that  welcomed  in  a  manner 
which  I  shall  never  forget  the  cause  which 
I  had  come  among  you  to  represent.  I 
was  there,  as  I  told  my  hearers  at  the  time, 
in  the  name  of  the  last  remnants  of  beauty 
that  the  barbarians  had  left  us,  to  plead 
with  the  land  of  every  kind  of  beauty. 
Those  threatened  beauties,  our  only  cities 
yet  intact,  the  treasures  and  sanctuaries  of 
our  whole  past  and  of  all  our  race,  are 
still  reeling  on  the  brink  of  the  same  abyss 
and,  failing  a  miracle  which  we  dare  not 
hope  for,  they  will  suffer  the  fate  of  Ypres, 

1  Delivered  in  Rome,  before  the  Associazione  della 
Stampa,  13  March,  1915. 

77 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

Louvain,  Malines,  Termonde,  Dixmude 
and  so  many  other  less  illustrious  victims. 
The  danger  in  which  they  stand  has  no 
doubt  aroused  the  indignation  of  the  civil- 
ized world;  but  not  a  hand  has  armed  itself 
to  defend  them.  I  blame  no  one;  I  re- 
proach no  one;  the  morality  of  the  nations 
is  a  virtue  that  has  not  yet  emerged  from 
the  state  of  infancy;  and  fortunately,  by 
the  hazard  of  war,  it  is  not  yet  too  late  to 
save  four  innocent  cities. 

To-day  I  have  not  come  to  speak  of 
monuments,  of  historical  relics,  nor  even  of 
the  wrongs  committed,  of  the  violation  of 
all  the  rights  and  laws  of  warfare  and 
every  international  convention,  of  incen- 
diarism, pillage  and  massacre;  I  have  come 
simply  to  utter  before  you  the  last  dis- 
tressful cry  of  a  dying  nation. 

At  this  moment  a  tragedy  is  being  en- 
acted in  Belgium  such  as  has  no  prece- 
dent in  the  history  of  civilized  peoples,  nor 

78 


Pro  Patria:    II 

even  in  that  of  the  barbarians,  for  the  bar- 
barians, when  committing  their  most  stu- 
pendous crimes,  lacked  the  infernal  de- 
liberation and  the  scientific,  all-powerful 
means  of  working  evil  which  to-day  are  in 
the  hands  of  those  who  profit  by  the  re- 
sources and  benefits  of  civilization  only 
to  turn  them  against  it  and  to  seek  the 
annihilation  of  all  its  noblest  and  most  gen- 
erous characteristics.  The  despairing  ru- 
mours of  this  tragedy  come  to  us  only 
through  the  chinks  of  that  ensanguined  well 
which  isolates  it  from  the  rest  of  the  world. 
Nothing  reaches  our  ears  but  the  lies  of 
the  enemy.  In  reality,  the  whole  of  Bel- 
gium is  one  huge  Prussian  prison,  where 
every  cry  is  cruelly  and  methodically  stifled 
and  where  no  voices  are  heard  save  those 
of  the  gaolers.  Only  now  and  again, 
after  a  thousand  adventures,  despite  a 
thousand  perils,  a  letter  from  some 
kinsman    or   captive    friend    arrives    from 

79 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

the  depths  of  that  great  living  ceme- 
tery, bringing  us  a  gleam  of  authentic 
truth. 

2 

You  are  as  familiar  with  this  truth  as 
I  am.  At  the  moment  when  her  soil  was 
invaded,  Belgium  numbered  seven  million 
seven  hundred  thousand  inhabitants.  It  is 
estimated  that  between  two  hundred  and 
fifty  and  three  hundred  thousand  have  per- 
ished in  battle  or  massacre,  or  as  the  result 
of  misery  and  privation;  and  I  am  not 
speaking  of  the  infant  children,  the  sacri- 
fice of  whom,  owing  to  the  dearth  of  milk, 
has,  it  appears,  been  frightful.  Five  or  six 
hundred  thousand  unfortunates  have  fled 
to  Holland,  France  or  England.  There 
remain  therefore  in  the  country  nearly 
seven  million  inhabitants;  and  more  than 
half  of  these  seven  millions  are  living 
almost    exclusively    on    American    charity. 

80 


Pro  Patria:    II 

In  what  is  above  all  an  industrial  coun- 
try, producing  normally,  in  time  of  peace, 
less  than  a  third  part  of  the  wheat  ne- 
cessary for  home  consumption,  the  enemy 
has  systematically  requisitioned  everything, 
carried  off  everything,  for  the  upkeep  of 
his  armies,  and  has  sent  into  Germany  what 
he  could  not  consume  on  the  spot.  The  re- 
sult of  so  monstrous  a  proceeding  may 
readily  be  divined:  on  all  that  soil,  once 
so  happy  and  so  rich,  to-day  taxed  and  pil- 
laged and  pillaged  again,  ravaged  and 
devastated  by  fire  and  the  sword,  there  is 
nothing  left.  And  the  situation  of  suffer- 
ing Belgium  is  so  cruelly  paradoxical  that 
her  best  friends,  her  dearest  allies,  even 
those  whom  she  has  saved,  are  powerless 
to  succour  her.  Isolated  as  she  is  from  the 
rest  of  the  world,  she  would  have  starved 
even  though  nothing  had  been  taken  from 
her.  Now  she  has  been  despoiled  of  all 
that  she  possessed,  while  France  and  Eng- 

81 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

land  can  send  her  neither  money  nor  pro- 
visions, for  they  would  fall  into  the  hands 
of  those  engaged  in  torturing  her,  so  much 
so  that  every  attempt  on  their  part  to  alle- 
viate her  sufferings  would  but  retard  her 
deliverance  still  further.  Did  history  ever 
witness  a  more  poignant,  a  more  des- 
perate tragedy?  It  is  a  fact  that  in  the 
midst  of  this  war  we  are  constantly  find- 
ing ourselves  confronted  with  events  such 
as  history  hitherto  has  never  beheld.  A 
people  resembling  an  enormous  beast  of 
prey,  in  order  to  punish  a  loyalty  and 
heroism  which,  if  it  retained  the  slight- 
est notion  of  justice  and  injustice,  the 
smallest  sense  of  human  dignity  and 
honour,  it  ought  to  worship  on  its  knees: 
this  vast  predatory  race  stealthily  resolved 
to  exterminate  an  inoffensive  little  nation 
whose  soul  it  felt  was  too  great  to  be  en- 
slaved or  reduced  to  the  semblance  of  its 
conqueror's.     It  was  on  the  point  of  suc- 

82 


Pro  Patria:   II 

ceeding,  amid  the  silence,  the  impotence, 
or  the  terror  of  the  world,  when  from 
beyond  the  Atlantic  a  generous  nation  took 
that  heroic  little  people  under  its  protec- 
tion. It  understood  that  what  was  in- 
volved was  not  merely  an  act  of  justice 
and  elementary  pity,  but  also  and  more 
particularly  a  higher  duty  towards  the  mor- 
ality and  the  eternal  conscience  of  man- 
kind. Thanks  to  this  great  nation's  in- 
tervention, it  will  not  be  said,  in  the  days 
to  come,  that  justice,  loyalty,  honesty  and 
heroism  are  no  more  than  dangerous  il- 
lusions and  a  fool's  bargain,  or  that  evil 
must  necessarily,  at  all  times  and  places, 
conquer  whenever  it  is  backed  by  force,  or 
that  the  only  reward  which  duty  magnifi- 
cently done  may  hope  to  receive  on  this 
earth  is  every  manner  of  grief  and  disaster, 
ending  in  death  by  starvation.  So  im- 
mense and  triumphant  an  example  of  in- 
quity  would  strike  the  ideals  of  mankind 

83 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

a  blow  from  which  they  would  not  recover 
for  centuries. 

3 

But  already  this  help  is  becoming  ex- 
hausted ;  it  cannot  be  indefinitely  prolonged ; 
and  very  soon  it  will  be  insufficient.  It  is, 
moreover,  at  the  mercy  of  the  slightest 
diplomatic  or  political  complication;  and 
its  failure  will  be  irreparable.  It  will 
mean  utter  famine,  unexampled  extermina- 
tion, which  till  the  end  of  the  world  will 
cry  to  heaven  for  vengeance.  It  is  no 
longer  a  question  of  weeks  or  months,  but 
one  of  days.  That  is  where  we  stand;  and 
these  are  the  last  hours  granted  by  destiny 
to  an  inactive  Europe  wherein  to  expunge 
the  shame  of  her  indifference. 

These  hours  belong  almost  solely  to  you, 
for  others  have  not  your  power.  What- 
ever may  happen,  however  long  you  may 
postpone  the  issue,  one  of  these  days  you 

84 


Pro  Patria:   II 

will  be  obliged  to  join  in  the  fray.  Every- 
thing advises,  everything  orders  you  to  do 
so;  and  I  can  see  nothing  on  the  side  of 
honour,  justice  or  humanity,  on  the  side 
of  the  will  of  the  centuries  or  the  human 
race,  nor  even  on  the  side  of  prudence  and 
self-interest,  that  allows  you  to  avoid  it. 
Is  it  not  better  and  more  worthy  of  your- 
selves than  all  the  subtleties,  plottings  and 
petty  bargainings  of  diplomacy? 

The  one  hour,  the  peremptory  hour  has 
struck  when  your  aid  can  break  the  balance 
between  the  powers  of  good  and  evil  which, 
for  more  than  two  hundred  days,  have  kept 
(the  future  of  Europe  hanging  over  the 
abyss. 

Fate  has  granted  you  the  magnificent 
boon,  the  all  but  divine  privilege,  of  saving 
from  the  most  horrible  of  deaths  four  or 
five  millions  of  innocent  human  beings,  four 
or  five  millions  of  martyrs  who  have  per- 
formed the  finest  action  that  a  people  could 

85 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

perform  and  who  are  perishing  because 
they  defended  the  ideals  which  your 
fathers  taught  them.  I  know  that  we  are 
faced  by  duties  which  until  to-day  had 
never  entered  into  the  morality  of  States; 
for  it  is  but  too  true  that  this  morality  still 
lags  a  thousand  miles  behind  that  of  the 
meanest  peasant.  But,  if  such  a  thing  has 
never  yet  been  done,  it  is  all  the  more 
glorious  to  be  the  first  to  do  it,  to  make 
an  effort  that  will  raise  the  life  of  na- 
tions to  a  level  which  the  life  of  the  in- 
dividual has  long  since  attained.  And  no 
people  is  better  qualified  than  the  Italian 
to  make  this  effort  which  the  world  and 
the  future  are  awaiting  as  a  deliverance. 

But  I  will  say  no  more.  I  have  been 
reproached  for  speaking  of  matters  which, 
as  a  foreigner,  I  ought  not  to  discuss.  I 
believed  that  these  great  questions  of  hu- 
manity interested  the  whole  human  race. 
Perhaps  I  was  wrong.     I  will  respect  the 

86 


Pro  Patria:   II 

profound  silence  in  which  great  actions  are 
developed;  and  I  leave  to  the  meditation 
of  your  hearts  that  which  I  am  constrained 
to  leave  unsaid.  They  will  tell  you  very 
much  better  than  I  could  all  that  I  had  to 
say  to  you. 


87 


PRO     PATRIA:     III 


A 


VIII 

PRO   PATRIA:   III1 
I 

LTHOUGH  nothing  entitles  me 
to  the  honour  of  addressing  you 
in  the  name  of  my  refugee  countrymen, 
nevertheless  it  is  only  fitting,  since  a  kindly 
insistence  brings  me  here,  that  I  should 
in  the  first  place  give  thanks  to  England 
for  the  manner  in  which  she  welcomed 
them  in  their  distress.  I  am  but  a  voice 
in  the  crowd;  and,  if  my  words  exceed  the 
limits  of  this  hall  and  lend  to  him  who 
utters  them  an  authority  which  he  himself 
does  not  possess,  it  is  only  because  they  are 
filled  with  unbounded  gratitude. 

In  this  horrible  war,  whose  stakes  are 
the  salvation  and  the  future  of  mankind, 

1  Delivered  in  London,  at  the  Queen's  Hall,  7  July, 
1915. 

91 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

let  us  first  of  all  salute  our  wonderful  sis- 
ter, France,  who  is  supporting  the  heaviest 
burden  and  who,  for  more  than  eleven 
months,  having  broken  its  first  and  most 
formidable  onslaught,  has  been  struggling, 
foot  by  foot,  at  closest  quarters,  without 
faltering,  without  remission,  with  an  heroic 
smile,  against  the  most  formidable  organ- 
ization of  pillage,  massacre  and  devasta- 
tion that  the  world  or  hell  itself  has  seen 
since  man  first  learnt  the  history  of  the 
planet  on  which  he  lives.  We  have  here  a 
revelation  of  qualities  and  virtues  surpass- 
ing all  that  we  expected  from  a  nation 
which  nevertheless  had  accustomed  us  to 
expect  of  her  all  that  goes  to  make  the 
beauty  and  the  glory  of  humanity.  One 
must  reside  in  France,  as  I  have  done  for 
many  years,  to  understand  and  admire  as 
it  deserves  the  incomparable  lesson  in 
courage,  abnegation,  firmness,  determina- 
tion, coolness,  conscious  dignity,  self-mas- 

92 


Pro  Patria:   III 

tery,  good-humour,  chivalrous  generosity 
and  utter  charity  and  self-sacrifice  which 
this  great  and  noble  people,  which  has 
civilized  more  than  half  the  globe,  is  at 
the  present  moment  teaching  the  civilized 
world. 

Let  us  also  salute  boundless  Russia,  with 
her  wonderful  soldiers,  innocent  and  in- 
genuous as  the  saints  of  old,  ignorant  of 
fear  as  children  who  do  not  yet  know  the 
meaning  of  death.  Yonder,  along  a  for- 
midable front  running  from  the  Baltic 
to  the  Black  Sea,  with  silent  multitudi- 
nous heroism,  amid  defeats  which  are  but 
victories  delayed,  she  is  beginning  the  great 
work  of  our  deliverance.  Lastly  let  us 
greet  Servia,  small  but  prodigious,  whom 
we  must  one  day  place  on  the  summit  of 
that  monument  of  glory  which  Europe  will 
raise  to-morrow  to  the  memory  of  those 
who  have  freed  her  from  her  chains. 

So  much  for  them.     They  have  a  right 

93 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

to  all  our  gratitude,  to  all  our  admiration. 
They  are  doing  magnificently  all  that  had 
to  be  done.  But  they  occupy  a  place  apart 
in  duty's  splendid  hierarchy.  They  are  the 
protagonists  of  direct,  material,  tangible, 
undeniable,  inevitable  duty.  This  war  is 
their  war.  If  they  would  not  accept  the 
worst  of  disgraces,  if  they  were  not  pre- 
pared to  suffer  servitude,  massacre,  ruin 
and  famine,  they  had  to  undertake  it;  they 
could  not  do  otherwise.  They  were  at- 
tacked by  the  born  enemy,  the  irreducible 
and  absolute  enemy,  of  whom  they  knew 
enough  to  understand  that  they  had  nothing 
to  expect  from  him  but  total  and  unremit- 
ting disaster.  It  was  a  question  of  their 
continued  existence  in  this  world.  They 
had  no  choice;  they  had  to  defend  them- 
selves; and  any  other  nation  in  their  place 
would  have  done  the  same,  only  there  are 
few  who  would  have  done  it  with  the  same 
spirit  of  self-abnegation,  the  same  devotion, 

94 


Pro  Patria:   III 

the  same  perseverance,  the  same  loyalty  and 
the  same  smiling  courage. 

2 

But  for  us  Belgians — and  we  may  say 
as  much  for  you  English — it  was  not  a 
question  of  this  kind  of  duty.  The  horri- 
ble drama  did  not  concern  us.  It  demand- 
ed only  the  right  to  pass  us  by  without 
touching  us;  and,  far  from  doing  us  any 
harm,  it  would  have  flooded  us  with  the 
unclaimed  riches  which  armies  on  the 
march  drag  in  their  wake.  We  Belgians 
in  particular,  peaceable,  hospitable,  inof- 
fensive and  almost  unarmed,  should,  by 
the  very  treaties  which  assured  our  exist- 
ence, have  remained  complete  strangers  to 
this  war.  To  be  sure,  we  loved  France, 
because  we  knew  her  as  well  as  we  knew 
ourselves  and  because  she  makes  herself 
beloved  by  all  who  know  her.  But  we  en- 
tertained no  hatred  of  Qermany.     It  is 

95 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

true  that,  in  spite  of  the  virtues  which  we 
believed  her  to  possess  but  which  were 
merely  the  mask  of  a  spy,  our  hearts  barely 
responded  to  her  obsequiously  treacherous 
advances.  For  the  German,  of  all  the  in- 
habitants of  our  planet,  has  this  one  and 
singular  peculiarity,  that  he  arouses  in  us, 
from  the  onset,  a  profound,  instinctive,  in- 
tuitive feeling  of  antipathy.  But,  even  so 
and  wherever  our  preferences  may  have 
lain,  our  treaties,  our  pledged  word,  the  very 
reason  of  our  existence,  all  forbade  us  to 
take  part  in  the  conflict.  Then  came  the 
incredible  ultimatum,  the  monstrous  de- 
mand of  which  you  know,  which  gave  us 
twelve  hours  to  choose  between  ruin  and 
death  or  dishonour.  As  you  also  know,  we 
did  not  need  twelve  hours  to  make  our 
choice.  This  choice  was  no  more  than  a 
cry  of  indignation  and  resolution,  sponta- 
neous, fierce  and  irresistible.  We  did  not 
stay  for  a  moment  to  ponder  the  extenua- 

96 


Pro  Patria:   III 

ting  circumstances  which  our  weakness 
might  have  invoked.  We  did  not  for  a  mo- 
ment consider  the  absolution  which  history 
would  have  granted  us  later,  on  realizing 
that  a  conflict  between  forces  so  completely 
disproportioned  was  futile,  that  we  must 
inevitably  be  crushed,  massacred  and  an- 
nihilated and  that  the  sacrifice  of  a  little 
people  in  its  entirety  could  prevent  nothing, 
could  barely  cause  delay  and  would  have 
no  weight  in  the  immense  balance  into 
which  the  world's  destinies  were  about 
to  be  flung.  There  was  no  question  of  all 
this;  we  saw  one  thing  only:  our  plighted 
word.  For  that  word  we  must  die;  and 
since  then  we  have  been  dying.  Trace  the 
course  of  history  as  far  back  as  you  will; 
question  the  nations  of  the  earth;  then 
name  those  who  have  done  or  who  would 
have  done  what  we  did.  How  many  will 
you  find?  I  am  not  judging  those  whom 
I  pass  over  in  silence,  for  to  do  so  would 

97 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

be  to  enter  into  the  secret  of  men's  hearts 
which  I  have  not  the  right  to  violate;  but 
in  any  case  there  is  one  which  I  can  name 
aloud,  without  fear  of  being  mistaken ;  and 
that  is  the  British  nation.  This  people 
too  entered  into  the  conflict,  not  through 
interest  or  necessity  or  inherited  hatred,  but 
simply  for  a  matter  of  honour.  It  has  not 
suffered  what  we  have  suffered;  it  has  not 
risked  what  we  have  risked,  which  is  all 
that  we  possessed  beneath  the  arch  of 
heaven;  but  it  owes  this  immunity  only  to 
outside  circumstances.  The  principle  and 
the  quality  of  the  act  are  the  same.  We 
stand  on  the  same  plane,  one  step  higher 
than  the  other  combatants.  While  the 
others  are  the  soldiers  of  necessity,  we  are 
the  volunteers  of  honour;  and,  without  de- 
tracting from  their  merits,  this  title  adds 
to  ours  all  that  a  pure  and  disinterested 
idea  adds  to  the  noblest  acts  of  courage. 
There  is  not  a  doubt  but  that  in  our  place 

98 


Pro  Patria:  III 

you  would  have  done  precisely  what  we 
did.  You  would  have  done  it  with  the 
same  simplicity,  the  same  calm  and  con- 
fident ardour,  the  same  good  faith.  You 
would  have  thrown  yourselves  into  the 
breach  as  whole-heartedly,  with  the  same 
scorn  of  useless  phrases  and  the  same  stub- 
born conscientiousness.  And  the  reason 
why  I  do  not  shrink  from  singing  in  your 
presence  the  praises  of  what  we  have  done 
is  that  these  praises  also  affect  yourselves, 
who  would  not  have  hesitated  to  do  the 
selfsame  things. 

3 

In  short,  we  have  both  the  same  concep- 
tion of  honour;  and  a  like  idea  must  needs 
bear  like  fruits.  In  your  eyes  as  in  ours, 
a  formal  promise,  a  word  once  given  is  the 
most  sacred  thing  that  can  pass  between 
man  and  man.  Now  far  more  than  the 
valour  of  a  man — because  it  rises  to  much 

99 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

greater  heights  and  extends  to  much  greater 
distances — the  valour  of  a  people  depends 
upon  the  conception  of  its  honour  which 
that  people  holds  and,  above  all,  upon 
the  sacrifices  which  it  is  capable  of  making 
for  the  sake  of  that  honour.  We  may  dif- 
fer upon  all  the  other  ideas  that  guide  the 
actions  of  mankind,  notably  upon  the  re- 
ligious idea;  but  those  who  do  not  agree 
on  this  one  point  are  unworthy  of  the  name 
of  man.  It  represents  the  purest  flame,  the 
ever  more  ardent  focus  of  all  human 
dignity  and  virtue. 

You  have  sacrificed  yourselves  wholly 
to  this  idea;  and,  in  the  name  of  this  idea, 
which  is  as  vital  and  as  powerful  in  your 
souls  as  in  ours,  you  came  to  our  aid,  as 
we  knew  that  you  would  come,  for  we 
counted  on  you  as  surely  as  you  counted 
on  us.  You  are  ready  to  make  the  same 
sacrifices ;  and  already  you  are  proudly  sup- 
porting the  heaviest  of  sacrifices.     Thus, 

100 


Pro  Patria;   III 

in  this  stupendous  struggle,  we  are  united 
by  bonds  even  more  fraternal  than  those 
which  bind  the  other  Allies.  Our  union  is 
more  lofty  and  more  generous,  for  it  is 
based  wholly  upon,  the  noblest  thoughts 
and  feelings  that  can  inspire  the  heart. 
And  this  union,  which  is  marked  by  a  mu- 
tual confidence  and  affection  that  grow 
hourly  deeper  and  wider,  is  helping  us  both 
to  go  even  beyond  our  duty. 

For  we  have  gone  beyond  it;  and  we  are 
exceeding  it  daily.  We  have  done  and  are 
doing  far  more  than  we  were  bound  to  do. 
It  was  for  us  Belgians  to  resist,  loyally,  vi- 
gorously, to  the  utmost  of  our  strength,  as 
we  had  promised.  But  the  most  sensitive 
honour  would  have  allowed  us  to  lay  down 
our  arms  after  the  immense  and  heroic  ef- 
fort of  the  first  few  days  and  to  trust  to 
the  victor's  clemency  when  he  recognized 
that  we  were  beaten.  Nothing  compelled 
us  to  immolate  ourselves  entirely,  to  sur- 

IOI 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
SANTA  BARBARA  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

render,  in  succession,  as  a  burnt-offering  to 
our  ideals,  all  that  we  possessed  on  earth 
and  to  continue  the  struggle  after  we  were 
crushed,  even  in  the  last  torments  of  starva- 
tion, which  to-day  holds  three  millions  of 
us  in  its  grip.  Nothing  compelled  us  to 
this  course,  other  than  the  increasingly  lofty 
ideal  of  duty  held  by  those  who  began  by 
putting  it  into  practice  and  are  now  living 
in  its  fulfilment. 

As  for  you  English,  you  had  to  come 
to  our  assistance,  that  is  to  say,  to  send  us 
the  troops  which  you  had  ready  under 
arms;  but  nothing  compelled  you  either, 
after  the  first  useless  engagements,  to  de- 
vote yourselves  with  unparalleled  ardour 
and  self-sacrifice,  to  hurl  into  the  mortal 
and  stupendous  battle  the  whole  of  your 
youth,  the  fairest  upon  earth,  and  all  your 
riches,  the  most  prodigious  in  this  world, 
nor  to  conjure  up  from  your  soil,  by  a 
miracle  which  was  thought  impossible,  in 

102 


Pro  Patria:    III 

fewer  months  than  the  years  that  would 
have  seemed  needful,  the  most  gallant,  de- 
termined and  tenacious  armies  that  have 
yet  been  marshalled  in  this  war.  Nothing 
compelled  you,  save  the  spirit  of  emulation, 
the  same  mad  love  of  duty,  the  same  pas- 
sion for  justice,  the  same  idolatry  of  the 
given  word  which,  that  it  may  be  sure  of 
doing  all  that  it  promised,  performs  far 
more  than  it  would  have  dared  to  promise. 

4 

Now,  during  the  last  few  weeks,  a  new 

combatant  has  entered  the  lists,  one  who 

occupies  a  place  quite  apart  in  the  sacred 

hierarchy  of  duty  and  honour  and  in  the 

moral  history   of  this  war.      I  speak   of 

Italy;  and  I  pay  her  the  tribute  of  homage 

which  is  her  due  and  which  I  well  know 

that  you  will  render  with  me,  for  you  of  all 

nations  are  qualified  to  do  so. 

Italy  had  no  treaty  except  with  our  ene- 

103 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

mies.  Her  first  act  of  justice,  when  con- 
fronted with  an  iniquitous  aggression,  was 
to  discard  this  treaty,  which  was  about  to 
draw  her  into  a  crime  which  she  had  the 
courage  to  judge  and  condemn  from  the 
outset,  while  her  former  allies  were  still  in 
the  full  flush  of  a  might  that  seemed  un- 
shakable. After  this  verdict,  which  was 
worthy  of  the  land  where  justice  first  saw 
the  light,  she  found  herself  free;  she  now 
owed  no  obligations  to  any  one.  There 
was  nothing  left  to  compel  her  to  rush  into 
this  carnage,  which  she  could  contemplate 
calmly  from  the  vantage  of  her  delightful 
cities;  and  she  had  only  to  wait  till  the 
twelfth  hour  to  gather  its  first  fruits. 
There  was  no  longer  any  compact,  any 
written  bond,  signed  by  the  hands  of  kings 
or  peoples,  that  could  involve  her  destiny. 
But  now,  at  the  spectacle,  unforeseen  and 
daily  more  abominable  and  disconcerting, 
of   the    barbarian    invasion,    words    half- 

104 


Pro  Patria:   III 

effaced  and  secret  treaties  written  by  un- 
known hands  on  the  souls  and  consciences 
of  all  men  revealed  themselves  and  slowly 
gathered  life  and  radiance.  To  some  ex- 
tent I  was  a  witness  of  these  things;  and 
I  was  able,  so  to  speak,  to  follow  with  my 
eyes  the  awakening  and  the  irresistible 
promulgation  of  those  great  and  mysterious 
laws  of  justice,  pity  and  love  which  are 
higher  and  more  imperishable  than  all 
those  which  we  have  engraved  in  marble 
or  bronze.  With  the  increase  of  the 
crimes,  the  power  of  these  laws  increased 
and  extended.  We  may  regard  the  inter- 
vention of  Italy  in  many  ways.  Like  every 
human  action  and,  above  all,  like  every 
political  action,  it  is  due  to  a  thousand 
causes,  many  of  which  are  trifling.  Among 
them  we  may  see  the  legitimate  hatred  and 
the  eternal  resentment  felt  towards  an 
hereditary  enemy.  We  may  discover  an 
interested  intention  to  take  part,  without 

105 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

too  much  risk,  in  a  victory  already  cert- 
ain and  in  its  previously  allotted  spoils. 
We  may  see  in  it  anything  that  we  please : 
the  resolves  of  men  contain  factors  of  all 
kinds;  but  we  must  pity  those  who  are  able 
to  consider  none  but  the  meaner  sides  of 
the  matter,  for  these  are  the  only  sides 
which  never  count  and  which  are  always 
deceptive.  To  find  the  real  and  lasting 
truth,  we  must  learn  to  view  the  great 
masses  and  the  great  feelings  of  mankind 
from  above.  It  is  in  them  and  in  their 
great  and  simple  movements  that  the  will 
of  the  soul  and  of  destiny  is  asserted,  for 
these  two  form  the  eternal  substance  of  a 
people.  And,  in  the  present  case,  the 
movement  of  the  great  masses  and  the  great 
feelings  of  the  people  took  the  form  of 
an  immense  impulse  of  sympathy  and  in- 
dignation, which  gradually  increased,  pene- 
trating farther  and  farther  into  the  popu- 
lar strata  and  gathering  volume  as  it  pro- 

106 


Pro  Patria;    III 

gressed,  until  it  urged  a  whole  nation  to  as- 
sume the  burden  of  a  war  which  it  knew 
to  be  crushing  and  merciless,  a  war  which 
each  of  those  who  called  for  it  knew  to 
be  a  war  which  he  himself  must  wage,  with 
his  own  hands,  with  his  own  body,  a  war 
which  would  wrest  him  from  the  pleasant 
ways  of  peace,  from  his  labours  and  his 
comforts,  which  would  weigh  terribly  upon 
all  those  whom  he  loved,  which  would 
expose  him  for  weeks,  perhaps  for  months, 
to  incredible  sufferings  and  which  meant 
almost  certain  death  to  a  third  or  a  half 
of  those  who  demanded  the  right  to 
brave  it.  And  all  this,  I  repeat,  occurred 
without  any  material  necessity,  from  no 
other  motive  than  a  fine  sense  of  honour 
and  a  magnificent  surge  of  admiration 
and  pity  for  a  small  foreign  nation 
that  was  being  unjustly  martyred.  We 
cannot    repeat   it   too    often :    here,    as    in 

the   case   of   the   sacrifice   which    Belgium 

107 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

and  England  offered  to  the  ideal  of 
honour,  is  a  new  and  unprecedented  fact 
in  history. 


1 08 


Belgium's    flag   day 


IX 


Belgium's  flag  day 


TO-DAY  our  flag  will  quiver  in  every 
French  hand  as  a  symbol  of  love 
and  gratitude.  This  day  should  be  a  day 
of  hope  and  glory  for  all  Belgium. 

Let  us  forget  for  a  moment  our  terrible 
distress;  let  us  forget  our  plains  and  mead- 
ows, the  fairest  and  most  fertile  in  Europe, 
now  ravaged  to  such  a  degree  that 
the  utmost  that  one  can  say  is  powerless 
to  give  any  idea  of  a  desolation  which 
seems  irremediable.  Let  us  forget — if  to 
forget  them  be  possible — the  women,  the 
children,  the  old  men,  peaceable  and  inno- 
cent, who  have  been  massacred  in  their 
thousands,  the  tale  of  whom  will  amaze 
the  world  when  once  the  grim  barrier  is 

broken  behind  which  so  many  secret  hor- 

iii 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

rors  are  being  committed.  Let  us  forget 
those  who  are  dying  of  hunger  in  our  coun- 
try, a  land  without  harvests  and  without 
homes,  a  land  methodically  taxed,  pillaged 
and  crushed  until  it  is  drained  of  the  last 
drop  of  its  life-blood.  Let  us  forget  those 
remnants  of  our  people  who  are  scattered 
hither  and  thither,  who  have  trodden  the 
path  of  exile,  who  are  living  on  public 
charity,  which,  though  it  show  itself  full 
of  brotherhood  and  affection,  is  yet  so  op- 
pressive to  those  supremely  industrious 
hands,  which  had  never  known  the  grievous 
burden  of  alms.  Let  us  forget  even  those 
last  of  our  cities  to  be  menaced,  the  fairest, 
the  proudest,  the  most  beloved  of  our 
cities,  which  constitute  the  very  face  of 
our  country  and  which  only  a  miracle  could 
now  save.  Let  us  forget,  in  a  word,  the 
greatest  calamity  and  the  most  crying  in- 
justice of  history  and  think  to-day  only 
of  our  approaching  deliverance.     It  is  not 

112 


Belgium's  Flag  Day 

too  early  to  hail  it.  It  is  already  in  all 
our  thoughts,  as  it  is  in  all  our  hearts.  It 
is  already  in  the  air  which  we  breathe,  in 
all  the  eyes  that  smile  at  us,  in  all  the  voices 
that  welcome  us,  in  all  the  hands  out- 
stretched to  us,  waving  the  laurels  which 
they  hold;  for  what  is  bringing  us  deliver- 
ance is  the  wonder,  the  admiration  of  the 
whole  world ! 


To-morrow  we  shall  go  back  to  our 
homes.  We  shall  not  mourn  though  we 
find  them  in  ruins.  They  will  rise  again 
more  beautiful  than  of  old  from  the  ashes 
and  the  shards.  We  shall  know  days  of 
heroic  poverty;  but  we  have  learnt  that 
poverty  is  powerless  to  sadden  souls  up- 
held by  a  great  love  and  nourished  by  a 
noble  ideal.  We  shall  return  with  heads 
erect,  regenerated  in  a  regenerated  Europe, 
rejuvenated  by  our  magnificnt  misfortune, 

"3 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

purified  by  victory  and  cleansed  of  the 
littleness  that  obscured  the  virtues  which 
slumbered  within  us  and  of  which  we  are 
not  aware.  We  shall  have  lost  all  the 
goods  that  perish  but  as  readily  come 
to  live  again.  And  in  their  place  we  shall 
have  acquired  those  riches  which  shall  not 
again  perish  within  our  hearts.  Our  eyes 
were  closed  to  many  things;  now  they 
have  opened  upon  wider  horizons.  Of 
old  we  dared  not  avert  our  gaze  from  our 
wealth,  our  petty  comforts,  our  little  rooted 
habits.  But  now  our  eyes  have  been 
wrested  from  the  soil ;  now  they  have 
achieved  the  sight  of  heights  that  were 
hitherto  unnoticed.  We  did  not  know  our- 
selves; we  used  not  to  love  one  another 
sufficiently;  but  we  have  learnt  to  know 
ourselves  in  the  amazement  of  glory  and 
to  love  one  another  in  the  grievous  ardour 
of  the  most  stupendous  sacrifice  that  any 
people  has  ever  accomplished.     We  were 

114 


Belgium's  Flag  Day 

on  the  point  of  forgetting  the  heroic  vir- 
tues, the  unfettered  thoughts,  the  eternal 
ideas  that  lead  humanity.  To-day,  not 
only  do  we  know  that  they  exist:  we  have 
taught  the  world  that  they  are  always  tri- 
umphant, that  nothing  is  lost  while  faith 
is  left,  while  honour  is  intact,  while  love 
continues,  while  the  soul  does  not  sur- 
render and  that  the  most  monstrous  of 
powers  will  never  prevail  against  those 
ideal  forces  which  are  the  happiness  and 
the  glory  of  man  and  the  sole  reason  for 
his  existence. 


ns 


ON     THE     DEATH     OF 
A     LITTLE     SOLDIER 


X 

ON  THE   DEATH    OF   A    LITTLE    SOLDIER 

I 

WHEN  I  speak  of  this  little  soldier 
who  fell  a  few  days  ago,  up  there 
in  the  Vosges,  it  is  not  that  I  may  mourn 
him  publicly.  It  behoves  us  in  these  days 
to  mourn  our  dead  in  secret.  Personal  sor- 
rows no  longer  count;  and  we  must  learn 
how  to  suppress  them  in  the  presence  of 
that  greater  sorrow  which  extends  over  all 
the  world,  the  particular  sorrow  of  the 
mothers  who  are  setting  us  an  example  of 
the  most  heroic  silence  that  human  suffer- 
ing has  been  taught  to  observe  since  suf- 
fering first  visited  womankind.  For  the 
admirable  silence  of  the  mothers  is  one 
of  the  great  and  striking  lessons  of  this 
war.  Amid  that  tragic  and  sublime  silence 
no  regret  dare  make  itself  heard. 

119 


The  Wrack  of  crie  Storm 

But,  though  my  grief  remains  dumb,  my 
admiration  can  still  raise  its  voice;  and  in 
speaking  of  this  young  soldier,  who  had 
not  reached  man's  estate  and  who  died  as 
the  bravest  of  men,  I  speak  of  all  his 
brothers-in-arms  and  hail  thousands  like 
him  in  his  name,  which  name  becomes  a 
great  and  glorious  symbol ;  for  at  this  time, 
when  a  prodigious  wave  of  unselfishness 
and  courage,  surging  up  from  the  very 
depths  of  the  human  race,  uplifts  the  men 
who  are  fighting  and  giving  their  lives  for 
its  future,  they  all  resemble  one  another  in 
the  same  perfection. 


My  friend  Raymond  Bon  was  a  sergeant 
in  the  27th  battalion  of  the  Chasseurs  Al- 
pins.  He  left  for  the  front  in  August, 
1 9 14,  with  the  other  recruits  of  the  19 15 
class,  which  means  that  he  was  hardly 
twenty  years  of  age;  and  he  won  his  stripes 

120 


On  the  Death  of  a  Soldier 

on  the  battlefield,  after  being  twice  named 
in  dispatches.  The  second  time  was  on  re- 
turning from  a  murderous  assault  at 
Thann,  in  Upper  Alsace,  in  which  he  had 
greatly  distinguished  himself.  I  quote  the 
exact  words : 


"Corporal  Bon  is  mentioned  in  the  or- 
ders of  the  battalion  for  his  gallantry 
under  fire  and  his  indifference  to  danger. 
When  the  leader  of  his  section  was  killed, 
Bon  took  command,  rushed  to  the  front 
and,  shouting  to  his  men  to  follow  him, 
gave  proofs  of  the  greatest  initiative  and 
courage.  He  was  the  first  in  the  enemy's 
trenches  with  his  section." 


That  day  he  was  promoted  to  sergeant 
and  complimented  by  the  general  in  front 
of  his  battalion  in  the  following  terms: 

"This  is  the  second  time,  my  friend,  that 

121 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

I  am  told  what  you  have  done;  nexr  time 
you  shall  be  told  what  I  have  done." 

To-day  men  tell  of  his  death,  but  also 
of  the  undying  glory  which  death  alone 
confers. 

"At  Hartmannsviller,"  writes  one  of 
Bon's  comrades,  "according  to  his  cap- 
tain's story,  our  friend's  company  was  held 
in  reserve,  waiting  to  support  the  attack 
delivered  by  a  regiment  of  infantry.  The 
order  came  to  support  and  reinforce  the 
attack.  The  company  at  once  leapt  from 
the  trenches,  with  the  captain  and  Bon  at 
its  head.  There  was  a  salvo  of  artillery; 
and  the  bursting  of  a  great  shell  caught 
Raymond  almost  full  in  the  body,  smash- 
ing his  right  leg  and  his  chest.  The  cap- 
tain was  hit  in  the  right  hand.  Notwith- 
standing his  horrible  wounds,  Bon  did  not 
lose  consciousness;  he  was  able  to  stammer 
out  a  few  words  and  to  press  the  hand 

122 


On  the  Death  of  a  Soldier 

which  the  captain  gave  him.     In  less  than 
two  minutes  all  was  over." 

And  the  captain  adds: 
"Always  ready  to   sacrifice   himself;   a 
brave  among  the  brave." 

These  are  modest  and  yet  glorious  de- 
tails :  modest  because  they  are  so  very  com- 
mon, because  they  are  constantly  being 
repeated  in  their  noble  monotony  and 
springing  up  from  every  side,  numberless 
as  the  essential  actions  of  our  daily  life; 
and  glorious  because  before  this  war  they 
seemed  so  rare  and  almost  legendary  and 
incomprehensible. 

3 

Raymond  Bon  was  a  child  of  the  south, 
of  that  Provence  which,  day  after  day,  is 
shedding  torrents  of  its  blood  to  wipe  out 
slanders  which  we  can  no  longer  remem- 
ber without  turning  pale  with  anger  and 

123 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

indignation.  He  was  born  at  Avignon,  the 
old  city  of  the  Popes  and  the  cicadas, 
where  men  have  louder  accents  and  lighter 
hearts  than  elsewhere.  He  was  a  little 
boxing-master,  who  earned  a  livelihood  at 
Nice  for  himself  and  his  destitute  parents 
by  giving  lessons  in  the  noble  art  of  self- 
defence  with  the  good,  ever-ready  weapons 
which  nature  has  bestowed  upon  us.  He 
boasted  no  other  education  than  that  which 
a  lad  picks  up  at  the  primary  school;  but, 
almost  illiterate  as  he  was,  he  possessed  all 
the  refinement,  the  innate  culture,  the  un- 
conscious delicacy  and  tact,  the  kindliness 
of  speech  and  feeling  and  the  beautiful 
heart  of  that  comely  race  whose  foremost 
sons  seem  to  be  purified  and  spiritualized 
from  their  first  childish  steps  by  the  most 
radiant  sunshine  in  the  world.  One  would 
say  that  they  were  directly  related  to  those 
exquisite  ephebes  of  ancient  Greece  who 
sprang  into  existence  ready  to  understand 

124 


On  the  Death  of  a  Soldier 

all  things  and  to  experience  life's  purest 
emotions  before  they  themselves  had  lived. 
My  reason  for  insisting  upon  the  point  is 
that,  in  this  respect  above  all,  he  repre- 
sented thousands  and  thousands  of  young 
men  from  that  wonderful  region  where  all 
the  best  and  most  lovable  qualities  of  man- 
kind lie  hidden  all  around  beneath  the  in- 
different surface  of  everyday  existence, 
only  awaiting  a  favourable  occasion  to  blos- 
som into  astonishing  flowers  of  grace  and 
generosity  and  heroism. 

4 

When  I  heard  that  he  had  gone  to  the 
front,  I  felt  a  melancholy  certainty  that  I 
should  never  set  eyes  on  him  again.  He 
was  of  those  whose  fate  there  is  no  mis- 
taking. He  was  one  of  those  predestined 
heroes  whose  courage  marks  them  out  be- 
forehand for  death  and  laurels.  I  but  too 
well  knew  his  eagerness,  his  unbounded  sin- 

125 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

cerity  and  single-mindedness  and  his  great 
heart:  that  admirable  heart  devoid  of  all 
caution  or  ulterior  motive  or  calculation, 
that  heart  turned,  at  all  times  and  with  all 
its  might,  purely  towards  honour  and  duty. 
He  was  bound  to  be  in  the  trenches  and  in 
the  bayonet-charge  the  same  man  that  I 
had  so  often  seen  in  the  ring,  taking  risks 
from  the  start,  taking  them  wholesale,  un- 
remittingly, blindly  and  cheerfully  and  al- 
was  ready  with  his  pleasant  smile,  like 
that  of  a  shy  child,  at  any  time  to  face 
whatever  giant  might  have  challenged  him. 
I  remember  that  one  day  in  the  year  19 14, 
he  was  training  Georges  Carpentier,  who 
was  to  meet  some  negro  heavy-weight  or 
other.  The  disproportion  in  the  strength 
of  the  two  men  struck  my  friends  and  me 
as  rather  alarming;  and  we  took  the  cham- 
pion of  the  world  aside  and  begged  him  not 
to  hit  too  hard  and  to  spare  our  little  in- 
structor as  much  as  he  could.     That  good 

126 


On  the  Death  of  a  Soldier 

fellow  Carpentier,  who  is  full  of  chival- 
rous gentleness,  promised  to  do  what  we 
asked;  but  after  the  first  round  he  came 
back  to  us  and  said: 

"I  can't  let  him  off  just  as  lightly  as  I 
should  like.  The  little  chap  is  too  plucky 
and  too  sensitive;  and  I  have  to  hit  out 
in  earnest.  Besides,  he  overheard  you 
and  what  he  says  is,  'Never  mind  what 
the  gentlemen  say;  they  are  much  too 
considerate  and  are  always  afraid  of  my 
getting  smashed  up.  There's  no  fear  of 
that.  You  go  for  me  hard,  else  we  sha'n't 
be  doing  good  work.'  " 

5 
"Good  work."     That  is  evidently  what 

he  did  down  at  the  front  and  what  all  of 
them  there  are  doing.  It  is  indeed  fine 
work,  the  most  glorious  that  a  man  can 
perform,  to  die  like  that  for  a  cause 
whose  triumph  he  will  not  behold,  for  bene- 
fits which  he  does  not  reap  and  which  will 

127 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

accrue  solely  to  his  fellow-men  whom  he 
will  never  see  again.  For,  apart  from 
those  benefits,  like  so  many  other  men,  like 
almost  all  the  others,  he  had  nothing  to 
gain  and  nothing  to  lose  by  this  war.  All 
that  he  possessed  in  the  world  was  the 
strength  of  his  two  arms ;  and  that  strength 
finds  a  country  everywhere. 

But  we  are  no  longer  concerned  with  the 
personal  and  immediate  interests  that  guide 
nearly  all  the  actions  of  everyday  life.  A 
loftier  ideal  has  visited  men's  minds  and 
occupies  them  wholly;  and  the  least  pre- 
pared, the  humblest,  the  minds  that  seemed 
to  understand  hardly  anything  of  the 
existence  that  came  before  the  tremendous 
trial,  now  feel  it  and  live  it  as  thoroughly 
and  with  the  same  infinite  ampleness  as  do 
those  minds  which  thought  themselves 
alone  capable  of  grasping  it,  of  considering 
it   from   above   or  contemplating   it   from 

every  side.     Never  did  a  sheer  ideal  sink 

128 


On  the  Death  of  a  Soldier 

so  deeply  into  so  many  hearts  or  abide  there 
for  so  long  without  wavering  or  faltering. 
And  therefore,  beyond  a  doubt,  somewhere 
on  high,  in  the  heart  of  the  unknown 
powers  that  rule  us,  there  is  being  piled 
up  at  this  moment  the  most  wonderful 
treasure  of  immaterial  forces  that  man  has 
ever  possessed,  one  upon  which  he  will 
draw  until  the  end  of  time;  for  in  that 
superhuman  treasure-house  nothing  is  lost 
and  we  are  still  living  day  by  day  on  the 
virtues  stored  in  it  long  centuries  ago  by 
the  heroes  of  Greece  and  Rome,  by  the 
saints  and  martyrs  of  the  primitive  Church 
and  by  the  flower  of  mediaeval  chivalry. 


129 


THE     HOUR     OF     DESTINY 


XI 

THE  HOUR  OF  DESTINY 

I 

WE  ARE  already  free  to  speak  of 
this  war  as  if  it  were  ended  and 
of  victory  as  if  it  were  assured.  In  princi- 
ple, in  the  region  of  moral  certainties,  Ger- 
many has  been  beaten  since  the  battle  of 
the  Marne;  and  reality,  which  is  always 
slower,  because  it  goes  burdened  beneath 
the  weight  of  matter,  must  needs  come 
obediently  to  join  the  ranks  of  those  cert- 
ainties. The  last  agony  may  be  prolonged 
for  weeks  and  months,  for  the  animal  is 
endowed  with  the  stubborn  and  almost  in- 
extinguishable vitality  of  the  beasts  of 
prey;  but  it  is  wounded  to  the  death; 
and  we  have  only  to  wait  patiently,  wea- 
pon in  hand,  for  the  final  convulsions  that 
announce  the  end.     The  historic  event,  the 

133 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

greatest  beyond  doubt  since  man  possessed 
a  history,  is  therefore  accomplished;  and, 
strange  to  say,  it  seems  as  though  it  had 
been    accomplished    in    spite    of    history, 
against  its  laws  and  contrary  to  its  wishes. 
It  is  rash,  I  know,  to  speak  of  such  things; 
and  it  behoves  us  to  be  very  cautious  in 
these  speculations  which  pass  the  scope  of 
human  understanding;  but,  when  we  con- 
sider what  the  annals  of  this  earth  of  ours 
have  taught  us,  it  seemed  written  in  the 
book  of  the  world's  destinies  that  Germany 
was  bound  to  win.     It  was  not  only,  as  we 
are  too  ready  at  the  first  glance  to  believe, 
the    megalomania    of   an    autocrat    drunk 
with  vanity,  the  gross  vanity  of  some  brain- 
less buffoon;   it  was  not  the  warlike   im- 
pulses, the  blind  infatuation  and  egoism  of 
a  feudal  caste;  it  was  not  even  the  impa- 
tient   and    deliberately    fanned    envy    and 
covetousness  of  a  too  prolific  race  close- 
cramped  on  a  dreary  and  ungrateful  soil: 

134 


The  Hour  of  Destiny 

it  was  none  of  these  that  let  loose  the  hate- 
ful war.  All  these  causes,  adventitious  or 
fortuitous  as  they  were,  only  settled  the 
hour  of  the  decision;  but  the  decision  itself 
was  taken  and  written,  probably  ages  ago, 
in  other  spheres  which  cannot  be  reached 
by  the  conscious  will  of  man,  spheres  in 
which  dark  and  mighty  laws  hold  sway 
over  illimitable  time  and  space.  The 
whole  line,  the  whole  huge  curve  of  history 
showed  to  the  mind  of  whosoever  tried 
to  read  its  sacred  and  fearful  hieroglyphics 
that  the  day  of  a  new,  a  formidable  and 
inexorable  event  was  at  hand. 

The  theories  built  up  on  this  point  in 
the  last  sixty  years  by  the  German  pro- 
fessors, notably  by  Giesbrecht,  the  his- 
torian of  the  Ottos  and  the  Hohenstaufens, 
and  Treitschke,  the  historian  of  the  Hohen- 
zollerns,  do  not  necessarily  carry  conviction 
but  are  at  least  impressive;  and  the  work 
of  these  two  writers,  which  we  do  not  know 

i35 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

as  well  as  we  should,  and  of  Treitschke 
in  particular  possessed  in  Germany  an  in- 
fluence that  sank  deep  into  every  mind, 
far  exceeding  that  of  Nietzsche,  which  we 
looked  upon  as  preponderant. 

But  let  us  ignore  for  the  moment  all  that 
belongs  to  a  'remote  past,  the  study  of 
which  would  call  for  more  space  than  we 
have  at  our  disposal.  Let  us  not  question 
the  empire  of  the  Ottos,  the  Hohenstau- 
fens  or  the  Hapsburgs,  in  which  Germany, 
at  least  as  a  nation  and  a  race,  played  but 
a  secondary  part  and  was  still  unconscious 
of  her  existence.  Let  us  rather  see  what 
is  happening  nearer  to  us  and,  so  to  speak, 
before  our  very  eyes. 


A  hundred  years  ago,  under  Napoleon, 
France  enjoyed  her  spell  of  hegemony, 
which  she  was  not  able  to  prolong  because 
this  hegemony  was  more  the  work  of  a 

136 


The  Hour  of  Destiny 

prodigious  but  accidental  genius  than  the 
fruit  of  a  real  and  intrinsic  power.  Next 
came  the  turn  of  England,  who  to-day  pos- 
sesses the  greatest  empire  that  the  world 
has  seen  since  the  days  of  ancient  Rome, 
that  is  to  say,  more  than  a  fifth  part  of 
the  habitable  globe.  But  this  vast  em- 
pire rests  no  more  than  did  Napoleon's 
upon  an  incontestible  force,  inasmuch  as 
up  to  this  day  it  was  defended  only  by  an 
army  less  numerous  and  less  well-equipped 
than  that  of  many  a  smaller  nation,  thus 
almost  inevitably  inviting  war,  as  Pro- 
fessor Cramb  pointed  out  a  year  or  two  ago 
in  his  prophetic  book,  Germany  and  Eng- 
land, which  has  only  recently  aroused  the 
interest  which  it  deserves. 

It  seemed,  therefore,  as  if  between  these 
two  Powers,  which  were  more  illusory  than 
real,  pending  the  advent  of  Russia,  whose 
hour  had  not  yet  struck;  in  this  gap  in 
history,  between  a  nation  on  the  verge  of 

137 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

its  decline,  or  at  least  seemingly  incapable 
of  defending  itself,  and  a  nation  that  was 
still  too  young  and  incapable  of  attack,  fate 
offered  a  magnificent  place  to  whoso  cared 
to  take  it.  This  is  what  Germany  felt,  at 
first  instinctively,  urged  by  all  the  ill-de- 
fined forces  that  impel  mankind,  and  sub- 
sequently, in  these  latter  years,  with  a 
consciousness  that  became  ever  clearer  and 
more  persistent.  She  grasped  the  fact 
that  her  turn  had  come  to  reign  over  the 
earth,  that  she  must  take  her  chance  and 
seize  the  opportunity  that  comes  but  once. 
She  prepared  to  answer  the  call  of  fate 
and,  supported  by  the  mysterious  aid  which 
it  lends  to  those  whom  it  summons,  she  did 
answer,  we  must  admit,  in  an  astonishing 
and  most  formidable  manner. 

She  was  within  a  hair's  breadth  of  suc- 
ceeding. A  little  less  prolonged  and  less 
gallant  resistance  on  the  part  of  Belgium, 
a  suspicious  movement  from  Italy,  a  false 

138 


The  Hour  of  Destiny 

step  made  upon  the  banks  of  the  Marne; 
and  we  can  picture  Paris  falling;  France 
overrun  and  fighting  heroically  to  her  last 
gasp;  Russia,  not  crushed,  but  weary  of 
seeking  victory  and  making  terms  for  good 
or  ill  with  a  conqueror  impotent  to  harm 
her;  the  neutral  nations  more  or  less  re- 
luctantly siding  with  the  strongest;  Eng- 
land isolated,  giving  up  her  colonies  to 
staunch  the  wounds  of  her  invaded  isle; 
the  fasces  of  justice  broken  asunder  by  a 
separate  peace  here,  a  separate  peace  there, 
each  equally  humiliating;  and  Germany, 
monstrous,  ferocious,  implacable,  finally 
towering  alone  over  the  ruins  of  Europe. 

3 

Now  it  seems  that  we  have  turned  aside 
the  inflexible  decree.  It  seems  that  we 
have  averted  the  fate  that  was  about  to 
be  accomplished.  It  was  bearing  down 
upon  us  with  the  weight  of  the  ages,  with 

139 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

all  the  weight  of  all  the  vague  but  irresist- 
ible aspirations  of  the  past  and,  perhaps, 
the  future.  Thanks  to  the  greatest  effort 
which  mankind  has  ever  opposed  to  the 
unknown  gods  that  rule  it,  we  are  entitled 
to  believe  that  the  decree  has  broken  down 
and  that  we  have  driven  it  into  the  evil 
cave  where  never  human  force  before  had 
compelled  it  to  hide  its  defeat. 

I  say,  "It  seems;"  I  say,  "We  are  en- 
titled to  believe."  The  fact  is  that  the  or- 
deal is  not  yet  past.  Even  on  the  day  when 
the  war  is  ended  and  when  victory  is  in  our 
hands,  destiny  will  not  yet  be  conquered. 
It  has  happened — seldom,  it  is  true,  but 
still  it  has  happened  twice  or  thrice — that  a 
nation  has  compelled  the  course  of  fate  to 
turn  aside  or  to  fall  back.  The  nation  con- 
gratulated herself,  even  as  we  believe  that 
we  have  the  right  to  do.  But  events  were 
not  slow  in  proving  that  she  had  congratu- 
lated herself  too  soon.    Fatality,  that  is  to 

140 


The  Hour  of  Destiny 

say,  the  enormous  mass  of  causes  and  ef- 
fects of  which  we  have  no  understanding, 
was  not  overcome;  it  was  only  delayed, 
it  awaited  its  revenge  and  its  day,  or 
at  least  what  we  call  its  day,  which  may 
extend  over  a  hundred  years  and  more 
where  nations  are  concerned,  for  fatality 
does  not  reckon  in  the  manner  of  men,  but 
after  the  fashion  of  the  great  movements 
of  nature.  It  is  important  at  this  time  to 
know  whether  we  shall  be  able  to  escape 
that  revenge  and  that  day.  If  men  and  na- 
tions were  swayed  only  by  reason,  if,  after 
being  so  often  the  absolute  masters  of  their 
happiness  and  their  future,  they  had  not 
so  oftetn  destroyed  that  which  they  had 
just  achieved,  then  we  might  say — and  in- 
deed ought  to  say — that  our  escape  de- 
pends only  upon  ourselves.  In  point  of 
fact,  three-quarters  of  the  risk  are  run 
and  the  fourth  is  in  our  power;  we  have 
only  to  keep  it  so.    Almost  all  the  chances 


141 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

of  the  fight  are  on  our  side  at  last;  and, 
when  the  war  is  over,  there  will  be  no- 
thing but  our  wisdom  and  our  will  con- 
fronting a  destiny  which  from  that  time 
onward  will  be  powerless  to  take  its  course, 
unless  it  first  succeed  in  blinding  and  per- 
verting them. 

In  this  hour  all  that  lies  hidden  under 
that  mysterious  word  will  be  waiting  on 
our  decision,  waiting  to  know  if  victory  is 
with  us  or  with  it.  It  is  after  we  have 
won  that  we  must  really  vanquish;  it  is  in 
the  hour  of  peace  that  the  actual  war  will 
begin  against  an  invisible  foe,  a  hundred 
times  as  dangerous  as  the  one  of  whom  we 
have  seen  too  much.  If  at  that  hour  we 
do  not  profit  by  all  our  advantages;  if  we 
do  not  destroy,  root  and  branch,  the  mili- 
tary power  of  an  enemy  who  is  in  secret 
alliance  with  the  evil  influences  of  the 
earth;  if  we  do  not  here  and  now,  by  an 
irrevocable    compact,     forearm    ourselves 

142 


The  Hour  of  Destiny 

against  our  sense  of  pity  and  generosity, 
our  weakness,  our  imprudence,  our  future 
rivalries  and  discords;  if  we  leave  a  single 
outlet  to  the  beast  at  bay;  if,  through  our 
negligence,  we  give  it  a  single  hope,  a  sin- 
gle opportunity  of  coming  to  the  surface 
and  taking  breath,  then  the  vigilant  fatal- 
ity which  has  but  one  fixed  idea  will  resume 
its  progress  and  pursue  its  way,  dragging 
history  with  it  and  laughing  over  its 
shoulder  at  man  once  more  tricked  and 
discomfited.  Everything  that  we  have  done 
and  suffered,  the  ruins,  the  sacrifices,  the 
nameless  tortures  and  the  numberless  dead, 
will  have  served  no  purpose  and  will  be 
lost  beyond  redemption.  Everything  will 
not  have  to  be  done  over  again,  for  nothing 
is  ever  done  over  again  and  fortunate  op- 
portunities do  not  occur  twice;  but  every- 
thing except  our  woes  and  all  their  con- 
sequences will  be  as  though  it  had  never 
been. 

143 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

4 
It  will  therefore  be  a  matter  of  holding 
our  own  against  the  enemy  whom  we  do 
not  see  and  mastering  him  until  the  turn 
or  chance  of  the  accursed  race  is  past. 
How  long  will  that  be?  We  cannot 
tell;  but,  in  the  swift-moving  history  of 
to-day,  it  seems  probable  that  the  waiting 
and  the  struggle  will  be  much  shorter  than 
they  would  have  been  in  former  times.  Is 
it  possible  that  fatality — by  which  I  mean 
what  perhaps  for  a  moment  was  the  un- 
acknowledged desire  of  the  planet — shall 
not  regain  the  upper  hand?  At  the  stage 
which  man  has  reached,  I  hope  and  believe 
so.  He  had  never  conquered  it  before; 
but  also  he  had  not  yet  risen  to  the  height 
which  he  has  now  attained.  There  is  no 
reason  why  that  which  has  never  happened 
should  not  take  place  one  day;  and  every- 
thing seems  to  tell  us  that  man  is  approach- 
ing  the    day   whereon,    seizing    the    most 

144 


The  Hour  of  Destiny 

glorious  opportunity  that  has  ever  present- 
ed itself  since  he  acquired  a  consciousness, 
he  will  at  last  learn  that  he  is  able,  when  he 
pleases,  to  control  his  whole  fate  in  this 
world. 


145 


IN     ITALY 


XII 

IN  ITALY 

I 

A  FEW  days  before  Italy  formed  her 
great  resolve,  the  following  lines  ap- 
peared in  one  of  the  leading  Pangermanic 
organs  of  the  peoples  beyond  the  Rhine, 
the  Kreuzzeitung: 

"We  have  already  observed  that  it  will 
not  do  to  be  too  optimistic  as  to  Italy's  de- 
cision ;  in  point  of  fact,  the  situation  is  very 
serious.  If  none  but  moderate  considera- 
tions had  ruled  Italy's  intentions,  there  is 
little  doubt  as  to  which  path  she  would 
choose ;  but  we  know  the  height  which  the 
wave  of  Germanophobia  has  attained  in 
that  country,  a  significant  mark  of  the 
popular  sentiment  being  the  declaration  of 
the  Italian  Socialists  upon  the  reasons  of 

149 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

tneir  inability  to  oppose  the  war.  An  equal 
source  of  danger  is  the  fact  that  the  gov- 
ernment feels  that  it  no  longer  controls 
the  current  of  public  opinion." 

The  whole  drama  of  Italian  intervention 
is  summed  up  in  these  lines,  which  explain 
it  better  than  would  the  longest  and  most 
learned  commentaries. 

The  Italian  government,  restrained  by 
a  politic  wisdom  and  prudence,  excessive, 
perhaps,  but  very  excusable,  did  not  wish 
for  war.  To  the  utmost  limits  of  patience, 
until  its  dignity  and  its  sense  of  security 
could  bear  no  more,  it  did  all  that  could 
be  done  to  spare  its  people  the  greatest 
calamity  that  can  befall  a  land.  It  held 
out  until  it  was  literally  submerged  and  car- 
ried away  by  the  flood  of  Germanophobia 
of  which  the  passage  which  I  have  quoted 
speaks.  I  witnessed  the  rising  of  this 
flood.     When  I  arrived  in  Milan,  at  the 

150 


In  Italy- 
end  of  November,  19 14,  to  speak  a  few 
sentences  at  a  charity-fete  organized  for  the 
benefit  of  the  Belgian  refugees,  the  hatred 
of  Germany  was  already  storing  itself  up 
in  men's  hearts,  but  had  not  as  yet  come  to 
the  surface.  Here  and  there  it  did  break 
out,  but  it  was  still  fearful,  circumspect  and 
hesitating.  One  felt  it  brewing,  seething 
in  the  depths  of  men's  souls,  but  it  seemed 
as  yet  to  be  feeling  its  way,  to  be  reckoning 
itself  up,  to  be  painfully  attaining  self-con- 
sciousness. When  I  returned  to  Italy  in 
March,  19 15,  I  was  amazed  to  behold  the 
unhoped-for  height  to  which  the  invading 
flood  had  so  swiftly  risen.  That  pious 
hatred,  that  necessary  hatred,  which  in  this 
case  is  merely  a  magnificent  passion  for 
justice  and  humanity,  had  swept  over  every- 
thing. It  had  come  out  into  the  full  sun- 
light; it  thrilled  and  quivered  at  the 
least  appeal,  proud  and  happy  to  assert 
itself,  to  manifest  itself  with  the  beautiful 

151 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

tumultuous  ostentation  of  the  South;  and  it 
was  the  "neutrals"  that  now  hid  themselves 
after  the  manner  of  unspeakable  insects. 
That  species  had  all  but  disappeared,  anni- 
hilated by  the  storm  that  was  gathering  on 
every  hand.  The  Germans  themselves  had 
gone  to  earth,  no  one  knew  where;  and 
from  that  moment  it  was  certain  that  war 
was  imminent  and  inevitable. 

In  the  space  of  three  months  a  stupen- 
dous work  had  been  accomplished.  It  is 
impossible  for  the  moment  to  weigh  and 
determine  the  part  of  each  of  those  who 
performed  it.  But  we  can  even  now  say 
that  in  Italy,  which  is  governed  preemi- 
nently by  public  opinion  and  which,  more 
than  any  other  nation,  has  in  its  blood  the 
traditions  and  the  habits  of  the  forum  and 
the  ancient  republics,  it  is  above  all  the 
spoken  word  that  changes  men's  hearts 
and  urges  them  to  action. 


152 


In  Italy 

2 

From  this  point  of  view,  the  admirable 
campaign  of  agitation  and  propaganda  un- 
dertaken by  M.  Jules  Destree,  author 
of  En  Italie)  was  of  an  importance  and  pos- 
sessed consequences  which  are  beyond  com- 
parison with  anything  else  accomplished 
and  which  are  difficult  to  realize  by  those 
who  were  not  present  at  one  or  other  of 
the  meetings  at  which,  for  more  than  six 
months,  indefatigably,  travelling  from 
town  to  town,  from  the  smallest  to  the 
most  populous,  he  uttered  the  distressful 
complaint  of  martyred  Belgium,  unveiling 
the  lies,  the  felonies,  the  monstrosities  and 
the  acts  of  devastation  perpetrated  by  the 
barbarian  horde  and  making  heard,  with 
sovran  eloquence,  the  august  voice  of  out- 
raged justice  and  of  baffled  right. 

I  heard  him  more  than  once  and  was 
able  to  judge  for  myself  of  the  magical 
effect — the  term  is  by  no  means  too  strong 

153 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

— which  he  produced  on  the  Italian  crowd. 
It  was  a  magnificent  spectacle,  which  I  shall 
never  forget.  I  then  perceived  for  the 
first  time  in  my  life  the  mysterious,  in- 
cantatory,  supernatural  powers  of  great 
eloquence. 

He  would  come  forward  wearing  a  lan- 
guid, dejected  and  overburdened  air.  The 
crowd,  like  all  crowds  awaiting  their  mas- 
ter, sat  thronged  at  his  feet,  silently  hum- 
ming, undecided,  unshaped,  not  yet  know- 
ing what  it  wanted  or  intended.  He  would 
begin;  his  voice  was  low,  leisurely,  almost 
hesitating;  he  seemed  to  be  painfully 
searching  for  his  ideas  and  expressions,  but 
in  reality  he  was  feeling  for  the  sensitive 
and  magnetic  points  of  the  huge  and  un- 
known being  whose  soul  he  wished  to  reach. 
At  the  outset  it  was  evident  that  he  did  not 
know  exactly  what  he  was  going  to  say.  He 
swept  his  words  across  the  assembly  as 
though   they   had   been   antennae.     They 

154 


In  Italy 

came  back  to  him  charged  with  sympathy 
and  strength  and  precise  information. 
Then  his  delivery  became  more  rapid,  his 
body  drew  itself  erect,  his  stature  and  his 
very  size  increased.  His  voice  grew  fuller; 
it  became  tremendous,  seductive  or  sarcas- 
tic, overwhelming  like  a  hurricane  all  the 
ideas  of  his  audience,  beating  against  the 
walls  of  the  largest  buildings,  flowing, 
through  the  doors  and  windows,  out  into 
the  surging  streets,  there  to  kindle  the  ar- 
dour and  hatred  which  already  thrilled  the 
hall.  His  face — tawny,  brutal,  ravaged, 
furrowed  with  shade  and  slashed  with  light, 
powerful  and  magnificent  in  its  ugliness — 
became  the  very  mask,  the  visible  symbol 
of  the  furious  and  generous  passions  of  the 
crowd.  At  moments  such  as  this,  he  truly 
merited  the  name  which  I  heard  those 
about  me  murmuring,  the  name  which  the 
Italians  gave  him  in  that  kind  of  helpless 
fear  and  delight  which  men   feel   in   the 

i5S 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

presence   of  an   irresistible   force:   he  was 
"the  Terrible  Orator." 

But    all   this   power,    which   seemed   so 
blindly  released,  was  in  reality  extremely 
circumspect,  extremely  subtle  and  marvel- 
lously disciplined.     The  handling  of  those 
shy  though  excited  crowds  called  for  the 
utmost    prudence,    as    a    certain    French 
speaker,  whom  I  will  not  name,  but  who 
wished  to  make  a  like  attempt,  learnt  to 
his  cost.     The  Italian  is  generous,  court- 
eous, hospitable,  expansive  and  enthusiastic, 
but  also  proud  and  susceptible.     He  does 
not   readily   allow   another   to   dictate   his 
conduct,  to  reproach  him  with  his  short- 
comings  or   to   offer   him   advice.     He   is 
conscious  of  his  own  worth;  he  knows  that 
he  is  the  eldest  son  of  our  civilization  and 
that  no  one  has  the  right  to  patronize  him. 
It  is  necessary,  therefore,  beneath  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  most  fiery  and  unbridled 
eloquence,  to  observe  perfect  self-mastery, 

156 


In  Italy- 
combined  with  infinite  tact  and  discretion. 
It   is  often   essential   to  divine   instantane- 
ously the  temper  of  the  crowd,  to  bow  be- 
fore the  most  varied  and  unexpected  cir- 
cumstances   and    to    profit    by    them.      I 
remember,     among    others,     a     singularly 
prickly  meeting  at  Naples.     The  Neapoli- 
tans are  hardly  warlike  people;  but  they 
none  the  less  felt  on  this  occasion  that  they 
must  not  appear  indifferent  to  the  generous 
movement  which  was  thrilling  the  rest  of 
Italy.      At    the    last    moment,    we    were 
warned  that  we  might  speak  of  Belgium 
and    her    misfortunes,    but    that    any    too 
pointed  allusion  to  the  war,  any  too  violent 
attack  upon   the   Teutonic  bandits   would 
arouse    protests    which    might    injure    our 
cause.      I,  being  no  orator,   had  only  my 
poor  written  speech,  which,  as  I  could  not 
alter  it,  became  dangerous.     It  was  neces- 
sary   to    prepare    the    ground.     Destree 
mounted  the  platform  and,  in  a  masterly 

i57 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

Improvisation,  began  by  establishing  a  long, 
patient  and  scholarly  parallel  between 
Flemish  and  Italian  art,  between  the  great 
painters  of  Florence  and  Venice  and  those 
of  Flanders  and  Brabant;  and  thence,  by 
imperceptible  degrees,  he  shifted  his 
ground  to  the  present  distress  in  Belgium, 
to  the  atrocities  and  infamies  committed  by 
her  oppressors,  to  the  whole  story,  to  the 
whole  series  of  injustices,  to  the  whole  dan- 
ger of  this  nameless  war.  He  was  ap- 
plauded; the  barriers  were  broken  down. 
Anything  added  to  what  he  had  said  was 
superfluous;  but  everything  was  permissible. 

3 

For  the  rest,  it  must  be  admitted  that 
a  wonderful  impulse  of  pity  and  admira- 
tion for  Belgium  sustained  the  orator  and 
lent  his  every  word  a  range  and  a  potency 
which  it  could  not  otherwise  have  pos- 
sessed.    This  unanimous  and  spontaneous 

158 


In  Italy 

sympathy  assumed  at  times  the  most  touch- 
ing and  unexpected  forms.  All  difficulties 
were  smoothed  away  before  us  as  by  magic ; 
the  sternest  prohibitions  were  ingeniously 
evaded  or  benevolently  removed.  From 
the  towns  which  we  were  due  to  visit  the 
hotel-keepers  telegraphed  to  us,  begging 
as  a  favour  permission  to  give  us  lodg- 
ing; and,  when  the  time  came  to  set- 
tle our  account,  it  was  impossible  to 
get  them  to  accept  the  slightest  remu- 
neration; and  the  whole  staff,  from  the 
majestic  porter  to  the  humblest  boot- 
boy,  heroically  refused  to  be  tipped.  If 
we  entered  a  restaurant  and  were  recog- 
nized, the  customers  would  rise,  take  coun- 
sel together  and  order  a  bottle  of  some 
famous  wine;  then  one  among  them  would 
come  forward,  requesting,  gracefully  and 
respectfully,  that  we  would  do  them  the 
honour  of  drinking  with  them  to  the  deli- 
verance of  our  martyred  motherland,     At 

i59 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

the  memory  of  what  that  unhappy  country 
had  suffered  for  the  salvation  of  the  world, 
a  sort  of  discreet  and  affecting  fervour  was 
visible  in  the  looks  of  all;  it  may  be  said 
that  nowhere  was  the  heroic  sacrifice  of  Bel- 
gium more  nobly  and  more  affectionately 
admired  and  understood;  and  it  will  be 
recognized  one  day,  when  time  has  done 
its  work,  that,  although  other  causes  in- 
duced Italy  to  take  upon  her  shoulders  the 
terrible  burden  of  what  was  not  an  inevi- 
table war,  the  only  causes  that  really,  in 
the  depths  of  her  soul,  liberated  her  re- 
solve were  the  admiration,  the  indignation 
and  the  heroic  pity  inspired  by  the  specta- 
cle, incessantly  renewed,  of  our  unmerited 
afflictions.  You  will  not  find  in  history  a 
nobler  sacrifice  nor  one  made  for  a  nobler 
cause. 


t6o 


ON      REREADING      THUCYDID 


E  S 


XIII 

ON    REREADING   THUCYDIDES 
I 

AT  MOMENTS  above  all  when  his- 
tory is  in  the  making,  in  these  times 
when  great  and  as  yet  incomplete  pages  are 
being  traced,  pages  by  the  side  of  which 
all  that  had  already  been  written  will  pale, 
it  is  a  good  and  salutary  thing  to  turn  to 
the  past  in  search  of  instruction,  warning 
and  encouragement.  In  this  respect,  the 
unwearying  and  implacable  war  which 
Athens  kept  up  against  Sparta  for  twenty- 
seven  years,  with  the  hegemony  of  Greece 
for  a  stake,  presents  more  than  one  ana- 
logy with  that  which  we  ourselves  are 
waging  and  teaches  lessons  that  should 
make  us  reflect.  The  counsels  which  it 
gives  us  are  all  the  more  precious,  all  the 

more  striking  or  profound  inasmuch  as  the 

163 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

war  is  narrated  to  us  by  a  man  who  re- 
mains, with  Tacitus,  despite  the  striving  of 
the  centuries,  the  progress  of  life  and  all 
the  opportunities  of  doing  better,  the  great- 
est historian  that  the  earth  has  ever  known. 
Thucydides  is  in  fact  the  supreme  historian, 
at  the  same  time  swift  and  detailed,  scrupu- 
lously sifting  his  evidence  but  giving  free 
play  to  intuition,  setting  forth  none  but 
incontestable  facts,  yet  divining  the  most 
secret  intentions  and  embracing  at  a  glance 
all  the  present  and  future  political  conse- 
quences of  the  events  which  he  relates.  He 
is  withal  one  of  the  most  perfect  writers, 
one  of  the  most  admirable  artists  in  the 
literature  of  mankind;  and  from  this  point 
of  view,  in  an  entirely  different  and  almost 
antagonistic  world,  he  has  not  an  equal 
save  Tacitus.  But  Tacitus  is  before  every- 
thing a  wonderful  tragic  poet,  a  painter 
of  foul  abysses,  of  fire  and  blood,  who  can 

lay  bare  the  souls  of  monsters  and  their 

164 


On  Rereading  Thucydides 

crimes,  whereas  Thucydides  is  above  all  a 
great  political  moralist,  a  statesman  en- 
dowed with  extraordinary  perspicacity,  a 
painter  of  the  open  air  and  of  a  free  state, 
who  portrays  the  minds  of  those  sane,  in- 
genious, subtle,  generous  and  marvellously 
intelligent  men  who  peopled  ancient  Greece. 
The  one  piles  on  the  gloom  with  a  lavish 
hand,  gathers  dark  shadows  which  he 
pierces  at  each  sentence  with  lightning- 
flashes,  but  remains  sombre  and  oppressed 
on  the  very  summits,  whereas  the  other  con- 
denses nothing  but  light,  groups  together 
judgments  that  are  so  many  radiant  sheaves 
and  remains  luminous  and  breathes  freely 
in  the  very  depths.  The  first  is  passion- 
ate, violent,  fierce,  indignant,  bitter,  sin- 
cerely but  pitilessly  unjust  and  all  made  up 
of  magnificent  animosities;  the  second  is  al- 
ways even,  always  at  the  same  high  level, 
which  is  that  which  the  noblest  endeavour 
of  human  reason  can  attain.     He  has  no 

165 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

passion  but  a  passion  for  the  public  weal, 
for  justice,  glory  and  intelligence.  It  is 
as  though  all  his  work  were  spread  out  in 
the  blue  sky;  and  even  his  famous  picture 
of  the  plague  of  Athens  seems  covered  with 
sunshine. 

2 
But  there  is  no  need  to  follow  up  this 
parallel,  which  is  not  my  object.  I  will 
not  dwell  any  longer — though  perhaps  I 
may  return  to  them  one  day — upon  the  les- 
sons which  we  might  derive  from  that 
Peloponnesian  War,  in  which  the  position 
of  Athens  towards  Lacedaemon  provides 
more  than  one  point  of  comparison  with 
that  of  France  towards  Germany.  True, 
we  do  not  there  see,  as  in  our  own  case, 
civilized  nations  fighting  a  morally  barbar- 
ian people  :  it  was  a  contest  between  Greeks 
and  Greeks,  displaying  however  in  the  same 
physical  race  two  different  and  incompati- 
ble spirits.     Athens  stood  for  human  life 

166 


On  Rereading  Thucydides 

in  its  happiest  development,  gracious, 
cheerful  and  peaceful.  She  took  no  serious 
interest  except  in  the  happiness,  the  impon- 
derous  riches,  the  innocent  and  perfect 
beauties,  the  sweet  leisures,  the  glories  and 
the  arts  of  peace.  When  she  went  to  war, 
it  was  as  though  in  play,  with  the  smile  still 
on  her  face,  looking  upon  it  as  a  more 
violent  pleasure  than  the  rest,  or  as  a  duty 
joyfully  accepted.  She  bound  herself  down 
to  no  discipline,  she  was  never  ready,  she 
improvised  everything  at  the  last  moment, 
having,  as  Pericles  said,  "with  habits  not 
of  labour  but  of  ease  and  courage  not  of 
art  but  of  nature,  the  double  advantage 
of  escaping  the  experience  of  hardship  in 
anticipation  and  of  facing  them  in  the  hour 
of  need  as  fearlessly  as  those  who  are  never 
free  from  them."1 

1This  and  the  later  passage  from  Pericles'  funeral 
oration  I  have  quoted  from  the  late  Richard  Craw- 
ley's admirable  translation  of  Thucydides'  Pelopon- 
nesian  War,  now  published  in  the  Temple  Classics. — 
A.  T.  de  M. 

167 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

For  Sparta,  on  the  other  hand,  life  was 
nothing  but  endless  work,  an  incessant 
strain,  having  no  other  objective  than  war. 
She  was  gloomy,  austere,  strict,  morose,  al- 
most ascetic,  an  enemy  to  everything  that 
excuses  man's  presence  on  this  earth,  a  na- 
tion of  spoilers,  looters,  incendiaries  and 
devastators,  a  nest  of  wasps  beside  a  swarm 
of  bees,  a  perpetual  menace  and  danger  to 
everything  around  her,  as  hard  upon  her- 
self as  upon  others  and  boasting  an  ideal 
which  may  appear  lofty,  if  it  can  be  man's 
ideal  to  be  unhappy  and  the  contented  slave 
of  unrelenting  discipline.  On  the  other 
hand,  she  differed  entirely  from  those  whom 
we  are  now  fighting  in  that  she  was  gener- 
ally honest,  loyal  and  upright  and  showed  a 
certain  respect  for  the  gods  and  their  tem- 
ples, for  treaties  and  for  international  law. 
It  is  none  the  less  true  that,  if  she  had  from 
the  beginning  reigned  alone  or  without  en- 
countering a  long  resistance,  Hellas  would 

168 


On  Rereading  Thucydides 

never  have  been  the  Hellas  that  we  know. 
She  would  have  left  in  history  but  a  precar- 
ious trace  of  useless  warlike  virtues  and  of 
minor  combats  without  glory;  and  mankind 
would  not  have  possessed  that  centre  of 
light  towards  which  it  turns  to  this  day. 

3 
What  was  to  be  the  issue  of  this  war? 
Here  begins  the  lesson  which  it  were  well 
to  study  thoroughly.  It  would  seem  in- 
deed as  if,  with  the  first  encounters  in  that 
conflict,  as  in  our  own,  the  inexplicable  will 
that  governs  nations  was  favourable  to  the 
less  civilized;  and  in  fact  Lacedaemon 
gained  the  upper  hand,  at  least  temporarily 
and  sufficiently  to  abuse  her  victory  to  such 
a  degree  that  she  soon  lost  its  fruits.  But 
Athens  held  the  evil  will  in  check  for 
seven-and-twenty  years;  for  twenty-seven 
summers  and  twenty-seven  winters,  to  use 

Thucydides'  reckoning,  she  proved  to  us 

169 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

that  it  is  possible,  in  defiance  of  probability, 
to  fight  against  what  seems  written  in  the 
book  of  heaven  and  hell.  Nay  more,  at 
a  time  when  Sparta,  whose  sole  industry, 
whose  sole  training,  whose  only  reason  for 
existence  and  whose  only  ideal  was  war, 
was  hugging  the  thought  of  crushing  in  a 
few  weeks,  under  the  weight  of  her  for- 
midable hoplites,  a  frivolous,  careless  and 
ill-organized  city,  Athens,  notwithstanding 
the  treacherous  blow  which  fate  dealt  her 
by  sending  a  plague  that  carried  off  a  third 
of  her  civil  population  and  a  quarter  of  her 
army,  Athens  for  seventeen  years  definitely 
held  victory  in  her  grasp. 

During  this  period,  she  more  than  once 
had  Lacedaemon  at  her  mercy  and  did  not 
begin  to  descend  the  stony  path  of  ruin  and 
defeat  until  after  the  disastrous  expedition 
to  Sicily,  in  which,  carried  away  by  her 
rhetoricians  and  bitten  with  inconceivable 

folly,  she  hurled  all  her  fleet,  all  her  sold- 

170 


On  Rereading  Thucydides 

icrs  and  all  her  wealth  into  a  remote,  un- 
profitable, unknown  and  desperate  adven- 
ture. She  resisted  the  decline  of  her  for- 
tunes for  yet  another  ten  years,  heaping  up 
her  sins  against  wisdom  and  simple  com- 
mon sense  and  with  her  own  hands  drawing 
tighter  the  knot  that  was  to  strangle  her, 
as  though  to  show  us  that  destiny  is  for 
the  most  part  but  our  own  madness  and 
that  what  we  call  unavoidable  fatality  has 
its  root  only  in  mistakes  that  might  easily 
be  avoided. 

4 
To  point  this  moral  was  again  not  my 
real  object.  In  these  days  when  we  have 
so  many  sorrows  to  assuage  and  so  many 
deaths  to  honour,  I  wished  merely  to  re- 
call a  page  written  over  two  thousand  years 
ago,  to  the  glory  of  the  Athenian  heroes 
who  fell  for  their  country  in  the  first  bat- 
tles of  that  war.  According  to  the  cus- 
tom of  the  Greeks,  the  bones  of  the  dead 

171 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

that  had  been  burnt  on  the  battlefield  were 
solemnly  brought  back  to  Athens  at  the  end 
of  the  year;  and  the  people  chose  the  great- 
est speaker  in  the  city  to  deliver  the  funeral 
oration.  This  honour  fell  to  Pericles,  son 
of  Xanthippus,  the  Pericles  of  the  golden 
age  of  human  beauty.  After  pronouncing 
a  well-merited  and  magnificent  eulogium  on 
the  Athenian  nation  and  institutions,  he 
concluded  with  the  following  words: 

"Indeed,  if  I  have  dwelt  at  some  length 
upon  the  character  of  our  country,  it  has 
been  to  show  that  our  stake  in  the  struggle 
is  not  the  same  as  theirs  who  have  no  such 
blessing  to  lose  and  also  that  the  panegyric 
of  the  men  over  whom  I  am  now  speaking 
might  be  by  definite  proofs  established. 
That  panegyric  is  now  in  a  great  measure 
complete;  for  the  Athens  that  I  have  cele- 
brated is  only  what  the  heroism  of  these 

and  their  like  have  made  her,  men  whose 

172 


On  Rereading  Thucydides 

fame,  unlike  that  of  most  Hellenes,  will 
be  found  to  be  only  commensurate  with 
their  deserts.  And,  if  a  test  of  worth  be 
wanted,  it  is  to  be  found  in  their  closing 
scene;  and  this  not  only  in  the  cases  in 
which  it  set  the  final  seal  upon  their  merit, 
but  also  in  those  in  which  it  gave  the  first 
intimation  of  their  having  any.  For  there 
is  justice  in  the  claim  that  steadfastness  in 
his  country's  battles  should  be  as  a  cloak 
to  cover  a  man's  other  imperfections,  since 
the  good  action  has  blotted  out  the  bad  and 
his  merit  as  a  citizen  more  than  outweighed 
his  demerits  as  an  individual.  But  none 
of  these  allowed  either  wealth  with  its  pro- 
spect of  future  enjoyment  to  unnerve  his 
spirit,  or  poverty  with  its  hope  of  a  day 
of  freedom  and  riches  to  tempt  him  to 
shrink  from  danger.  No,  holding  that 
vengeance  upon  their  enemies  was  more  to 
be  desired  than  any  personal  blessings  and 
reckoning  this  to  be  the  most  glorious  of 

173 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

hazards,  they  joyfully  determined  to  accept 
the  risk,  to  make  sure  of  their  vengeance 
and  to  let  their  wishes  wait;  and,  while 
committing  to  hope  the  uncertainty  of  final 
success,  in  the  business  before  them  they 
thought  fit  to  act  boldly  and  trust  in  them- 
selves. Thus  choosing  to  die  resisting 
rather  than  to  live  submitting,  they  fled 
only  from  dishonour,  but  met  danger  face 
to  face  and,  after  one  brief  moment,  while 
at  the  summit  of  their  fortune,  escaped  not 
from  their  fear  but  from  their  glory. 

"So  died  these  man  as  became  Athenians. 
You,  their  survivors,  must  determine  to 
have  as  unfaltering  a  resolution  in  the  field, 
though  you  may  pray  that  it  may  have  a 
happier  issue.  And,  not  contented  with 
ideas  derived  only  from  words  of  the  ad- 
vantages which  are  bound  up  with  the  de- 
fence of  your  country,  though  these  would 
furnish  a  valuable  text  to  a  speaker  even 
before  an  audience  so  alive  to  them  as  the 

174 


On  Rereading  Thucydides 

present,  you  must  yourselves  realize  the 
power  of  Athens  and  feed  your  eyes  upon 
her  from  day  to  day,  till  love  of  her  fills 
your  hearts;  and  then,  when  all  her  great- 
ness shall  break  upon  you,  you  must  reflect 
that  it  was  by  courage,  sense  of  duty  and  a 
keen  feeling  of  honour  in  action  that  men 
were  enabled  to  win  all  this  and  that  no 
personal  failure  in  an  enterprise  could  make 
them  consent  to  deprive  their  country  of 
their  valour,  but  they  laid  it  at  her  feet 
as  the  most  glorious  contribution  that  they 
could  offer.  For  by  this  offering  of  their 
lives  made  in  common  by  them  all  they 
each  of  them  individually  received  that  re- 
nown which  never  grows  old  and,  for  a 
sepulchre,  not  so  much  that  in  which  their 
bones  have  been  deposited,  but  that  noblest 
of  shrines  wherein  their  glory  is  laid  up  to 
be  eternally  remembered  upon  every  occa- 
sion on  which  deed  or  story  shall  call  for 
its  commemoration.     For  heroes  have  the 

i75 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

whole  earth  for  their  tomb;  and  in  lands 
far  from  their  own,  where  the  column  with 
its  epitaph  declares  it,  there  is  enshrined 
In  every  breast  a  record  unwritten  with  no 
tablet  to  preserve  it,  except  that  of  the 
heart.  These  take  as  your  model  and, 
judging  happiness  to  be  the  fruit  of  free- 
dom and  freedom  of  valour,  never  decline 
the  dangers  of  war.  For  it  is  not  the 
miserable  that  would  most  justly  be  un- 
sparing of  their  lives:  these  have  nothing 
to  hope  for;  it  is  rather  they  to  whom  con- 
tinued life  may  bring  reverses  as  yet  un- 
known and  to  whom  a  fall,  if  it  came, 
would  be  most  tremendous  in  its  conse- 
quences. And  surely,  to  a  man  of  spirit, 
the  degradation  of  cowardice  must  be  im- 
measurably more  grievous  than  the  unfelt 
death  which  strikes  him  in  the  midst  of  his 
strength  and  patriotism ! 

"Comfort,  therefore,  not  condolence,  is 
what  I  have  to  offer  to  the  parents  of  the 

176 


On  Rereading  Thucydides 

dead  who  may  be  here.  Numberless  are 
the  chances  to  which,  as  they  know,  the  life 
of  man  is  subject;  but  fortunate  indeed  are 
they  who  draw  for  their  lot  a  death  so 
glorious  as  that  which  has  caused  your 
mourning  and  to  whom  life  has  been  so 
exactly  measured  as  to  terminate  in  the 
happiness  in  which  it  has  been  passed.  Still 
I  know  that  this  is  a  hard  saying,  especially 
when  those  are  in  question  of  whom  you 
will  be  constantly  reminded  by  seeing  in 
the  homes  of  others  blessings  of  which  once 
you  also  boasted;  for  grief  is  felt  not  so 
much  for  the  want  of  what  we  have  never 
known  as  for  the  loss  of  that  to  which  we 
have  been  long  accustomed.  Yet  you  who 
are  still  of  an  age  to  beget  children  must 
bear  up  in  the  hope  of  having  others  in 
their  stead :  not  only  will  they  help  you  to 
forget  those  whom  you  have  lost,  but  they 
will  be  to  the  state  at  once  a  reinforcement 
and  a  security;  for  never  can  a  fair  or  just 
policy  be  expected  of  the  citizen  who  does 

177 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

not,  like  his  fellows,  bring  to  the  decision 
the  interests  and  apprehensions  of  a  father. 
While  those  of  you  who  have  passed  your 
prime  must  congratulate  yourselves  with 
the  thought  that  the  best  part  of  your  life 
was  fortunate  and  that  the  brief  span  that 
remains  will  be  cheered  by  the  fame  of  the 
departed.  For  it  is  only  the  love  of  hon- 
our that  never  grows  old;  and  honour  it  is, 
not  gain,  as  some  would  have  it,  that  re- 
joices the  heart  of  age  and  helplessness. 
"And,  now  that  you  have  brought  to  a 
close  your  lamentations  for  your  relatives, 
you  may  depart." 

These  words  spoken  twenty-three  centu- 
ies  ago  ring  in  our  hearts  as  though  they 
were  uttered  yesterday.  They  celebrate 
our  dead  better  than  could  any  eloquence  of 
ours,  however  poignant  it  might  be.  Let 
us  bow  before  their  paramount  beauty  and 
before  the  great  people  that  could  applaud 
and  understand. 

178 


THE    DEAD    DO    NOT    DIE 


XIV 

THE   DEAD  DO   NOT  DIE 
I 

WHEN  we  behold  the  terrible  loss  of 
so  many  young  lives,  when  we  see 
so  many  incarnations  of  physical  and  moral 
vigour,  of  intellect  and  of  glorious  pro- 
mise pitilessly  cut  off  in  their  first  flower,  we 
are  on  the  verge  of  despair.  Never  before 
have  the  fairest  energies  and  aspirations 
of  men  been  flung  recklessly  and  incessantly 
into  an  abyss  whence  comes  no  sound  or 
answer.  Never  since  it  came  into  existence 
has  humanity  squandered  its  treasure,  its 
substance  and  its  prospects  so  lavishly.  For 
more  than  twelve  months,  on  every  battle- 
field, where  the  bravest,  the  truest,  the  most 
ardent  and  self-sacrificing  are  necessarily 
the  first  to  die  and  where  the  less  courage- 
ous, the  less  generous,  the  weak,  the  ailing, 

181 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

in  a  word  the  less  desirable,  alone  possess 
some  chance  of  escaping  the  carnage,  for 
over  twelve  months  a  sort  of  monstrous 
inverse  selection  has  been  in  operation,  one 
which  seems  to  be  deliberately  seeking  the 
downfall  of  the  human  race.  And  we  won- 
der uneasily  what  the  state  of  the  world 
will  be  after  the  great  trial  and  what  will 
be  left  of  it  and  what  will  be  the  future 
of  this  stunted  race,  shorn  of  all  the  best 
and  noblest  part  of  it. 

The  problem  is  certainly  one  of  the 
darkest  that  have  ever  vexed  the  minds  of 
men.  It  contains  a  material  truth  before 
which  we  remain  defenceless;  and,  if  we 
accept  it  as  it  stands,  we  can  discover  no 
remedy  for  the  evil  that  threatens  us.  But 
material  and  tangible  truths  are  never  any- 
thing but  a  more  or  less  salient  angle  of 
greater  and  deeper-lying  truths.  And,  on 
the  other  hand,  mankind  appears  to  be  such 

a  necessary  and  indestructible  force  of  na* 

182 


The  Dead  Do  not  Die 

ture  that  it  has  always,  hitherto,  not  only 
survived  the  most  desperate  ordeals,  but 
succeeded  in  benefiting  by  them  and  emer- 
ging greater  and  stronger  than  before. 


We  know  that  peace  is  better  than  war; 
it  were  madness  to  compare  the  two.  We 
know  that,  if  this  catacylsm  let  loose  by  an 
act  of  unutterable  folly  had  not  come  upon 
the  world,  mankind  would  doubtless  have 
reached  ere  long  a  zenith  of  wonderful 
achievement  whose  manifestations  it  is  im- 
possible to  foreshadow.  We  know  that,  if 
a  third  or  a  fourth  part  of  the  fabulous 
sums  expended  on  extermination  and  de- 
struction had  been  devoted  to  works  of 
peace,  all  the  iniquities  that  poison  the  air 
we  breathe  would  have  been  triumphantly 
redressed  and  that  the  social  question,  the 
one  great  question,  that  matter  of  life  and 
death  which  justice  demands  that  posterity 

i<j3 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

should  face,  would  have  found  its  definite 
solution,  once  and  for  all,  in  a  happiness 
which  now  perhaps  even  our  sons  and 
grandsons  will  not  realize.  We  know  that 
the  disappearance  of  two  or  three  million 
young  existences,  cut  down  when  they  were 
on  the  point  of  bearing  fruit,  will  leave  in 
history  a  void  that  will  not  be  easily  filled, 
even  as  we  know  that  among  those  dead 
were  mighty  intellects,  treasures  of  genius 
which  will  not  come  back  again  and  which 
contained  inventions  and  discoveries  that 
will  now  perhaps  be  lost  to  us  for  centuries. 
We  know  that  we  shall  never  grasp  the 
consequences  of  this  thrusting  back  of  pro- 
gress and  of  this  unprecedented  devastation. 
But,  granting  all  this,  it  is  a  good  thing  to 
recover  our  balance  and  stand  upon  our 
feet.  There  is  no  irreparable  loss.  Every- 
thing is  transformed,  nothing  perishes  and 
that  which  seems  to  be  hurled  into  destruc- 
tion is  not  destroyed  at  all.     Our  moral 

184 


The  Dead  Do  not  Die 

world,  even  as  our  physical  world,  is  a  vast 
but  hermetically  sealed  sphere,  whence 
naught  can  issue,  whence  naught  can 
fall,  to  be  dissolved  in  space.  All  that 
exists,  all  that  comes  into  being  upon 
this  earth  remains  there  and  bears  fruit; 
and  the  most  appalling  wastage  is  but 
material  or  spiritual  riches  flung  away  for 
an  instant,  to  fall  to  the  ground  again  in  a 
new  form.  There  is  no  escape  or  leakage, 
no  filtering  through  cracks,  no  missing  the 
mark,  not  even  waste  or  neglect.  All  this 
heroism  poured  out  on  every  side  does  not 
leave  our  planet;  and  the  reason  why  the 
courage  of  our  fighters  seems  so  general 
and  yet  so  extraordinary  is  that  all  the 
might  of  the  dead  has  passed  into  the 
survivors.  All  those  forces  of  wisdom, 
patience,  honour  and  self-sacrifice  which  in- 
crease day  by  day  and  which,  we  ourselves, 
who  are  far  from  the  field  of  danger,  feel 
rising  within  us  without  knowing  whence 

185 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

they  come  are  nothing  but  the  souls  of  the 
heroes  gathered  and  absorbed  by  our  own 
souls. 

3 

It  is  well  at  times  to  contemplate  in- 
visible things  as  though  we  saw  them  with 
our  eyes.  This  was  the  aim  of  all  the 
great  religions,  when  they  represented 
under  forms  appropriate  to  the  civilization 
of  their  day,  the  latent,  deep,  instinctive, 
general  and  essential  truths  which  are  the 
guiding  principles  of  mankind.  All  have 
felt  and  recognized  that  loftiest  of  all 
truths,  the  communion  of  the  living  and 
the  dead,  and  have  given  it  various  names 
designating  the  same  mysterious  verity :  the 
Christians  know  it  as  revival  of  merit,  the 
Buddhists  as  reincarnation,  or  transmigra- 
tion of  souls,  and  the  Japanese  as  Shinto- 
ism,  or  ancestor-worship.  The  last  are 
more  fully  convinced  than  any  other  nation 

186 


The  Dead  Do  not  Die 

that  the  dead  do  not  cease  to  live  and  that 
they  direct  all  our  actions,  are  exalted  by 
our  virtues  and  become  gods. 

Lafcadio  Hearn,  the  writer  who  has 
most  closely  studied  and  understood  that 
wonderful  ancestor-worship,  says: 

"One  of  the  surprises  of  our  future  will 
certainly  be  a  return  to  beliefs  and  ideas 
long  ago  abandoned  upon  the  mere  assump- 
tion that  they  contained  no  truth — beliefs 
still  called  barbarous,  pagan,  mediaeval,  by 
those  who  condemn  them  out  of  traditional 
habit.  Year  after  year  the  researches  of 
science  afford  us  new  proof  that  the  savage, 
the  barbarian,  the  idolater,  the  monk,  each 
and  all  have  arrived,  by  different  paths,  as 
near  to  some  point  of  eternal  truth  as  any 
thinker  of  the  nineteenth  century.  We  are 
now  learning  also,  that  the  theories  of  the 
astrologers  and  of  the  alchemists  were  but 
partially,   not   totally,   wrong.      We   have 

187 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

reason  even  to  suppose  that  no  dream  of 
the  invisible  world  has  ever  been  dreamed, 
that  no  hypothesis  of  the  unseen  has  ever 
been  imagined — which  future  science  will 
not  prove  to  have  contained  some  germ  of 
reality."1 

There  are  many  things  which  might  be 
added  to  these  lines,  notably  all  that  the 
most  recent  of  our  sciences,  metapsychics, 
is  engaged  in  discovering  with  regard  to 
the  miraculous  faculties  of  our  subcon- 
sciousness. 

But,  to  return  more  directly  to  what  we 
were  saying,  was  it  not  observed  that,  after 
the  great  battles  of  the  Napoleonic  era,  the 
birth-rate  increased  in  an  extraordinary 
manner,  as  though  the  lives  suddenly  cut 
short  in  their  prime  were  not  really  dead 
and  were  eager  to  be  back  again  in  our 
midst  and  complete  their  career?     If  we 

1Kokoro:  Hints  and  Echoes  of  Japanese  Life,  chap- 
ter xiv.,  "Some  thoughts  about  Ancestor-Worship." 

188 


The  Dead  Do  not  Die 

could  follow  with  our  eyes  all  that  is  hap- 
pening in  the  spiritual  world  that  rises 
above  us  on  every  side,  we  should  no  doubt 
see  that  it  is  the  same  with  the  moral  force 
that  seems  to  be  lost  on  the  field  of  slaugh- 
ter. It  knows  where  to  go,  it  knows  its 
goal,  it  does  not  hesitate.  All  that  our 
wonderful  dead  relinquish  they  bequeath  to 
us;  and  when  they  die  for  us,  they  leave 
us  their  lives  not  in  any  strained  meta- 
phorical sense,  but  in  a  very  real  and  direct 
way.  Virtue  goes  out  of  every  man  who 
falls  while  performing  a  deed  of  glory; 
and  that  virtue  drops  down  upon  us;  and 
nothing  of  him  is  lost  and  nothing  evapor- 
ates in  the  shock  of  a  premature  end.  He 
gives  us  in  one  solitary  and  mighty  stroke 
what  he  would  have  given  us  in  a  long  life 
of  duty  and  love.  Death  does  not  injure 
life;  it  is  powerless  against  it.  Life's  ag- 
gregate never  changes.  What  death  takes 
from  those  who  fall  enters  into  those  who 

189 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

are  left  standing.  The  number  of  lamps 
grows  less,  but  the  flame  rises  higher. 
Death  is  in  no  wise  the  gainer  so  long  as 
there  are  living  men.  The  more  it  exercises 
its  ravages,  the  more  it  increases  the  in- 
tensity of  that  which  it  cannot  touch;  the 
more  it  pursues  its  phantom  victories,  the 
better  does  it  prove  to  us  that  man  will  end 
by  conquering  death. 


190 


IN     MEMORIAM 


XV 

IN  MEMORIAM 
I 

THOSE  who  die  for  their  country 
should  not  be  numbered  with  the  dead. 
We  must  call  them  by  another  name.  They 
have  nothing  in  common  with  those  who 
end  in  their  beds  a  life  that  is  worn  out,  a 
life  almost  always  too  long  and  often  use- 
less. Death,  which  every  elsewhere  is  but 
the  object  of  fear  and  horror,  bringing 
naught  but  nothingness  and  despair,  this 
death,  on  the  field  of  battle,  in  the  clash 
of  glory,  becomes  more  gracious  than  birth 
and  exhales  a  beauty  greater  than  that  of 
love.  No  life  will  ever  give  what  their 
youth  is  offering  us,  that  youth  which  gives 
in  one  moment  the  days  and  the  years  that 
lay  before  it.  There  is  no  sacrifice  to  be 
compared  with  that  which  they  have  made  ; 

193 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

for  which  reason  there  is  no  glory  that  can 
soar  so  high  as  theirs,  no  gratitude  that  can 
surpass  the  gratitude  which  we  owe  them. 
They  have  not  only  a  right  to  the  foremost 
place  in  our  memories:  they  have  a  right 
to  all  our  memories  and  to  everything  that 
we  are,  since  we  exist  only  through  them. 

2 

And  now  it  is  in  us  that  their  life,  so 
suddenly  cut  short,  must  resume  its  course. 
Whatever  be  our  faith  and  whatever  the 
God  whom  it  adores,  one  thing  is  almost 
certain  and,  in  spite  of  all  appearances,  is 
daily  becoming  more  certain:  it  is  that 
death  and  life  are  commingled;  the  dead 
and  the  living  alike  are  but  moments, 
hardly  dissimilar,  of  a  single  and  infinite 
existence  and  members  of  one  immortal 
family.  They  are  not  beneath  the  earth, 
in  the  depths  of  their  tombs;  they  lie  deep 
in  our  hearts,  where  all  that  they  once  were 

194 


In  Memoriam 

will  continue  to  live  to  to  act ;  and  they  live 
in  us  even  as  we  die  in  them.  They  see  us, 
they  understand  us  more  nearly  than  when 
they  were  in  our  arms;  let  us  then  keep  a 
watch  upon  ourselves,  so  that  they  witness 
no  actions  and  hear  no  words  but  words 
and  actions  that  shall  be  worthy  of  them. 


195 


SUPERNATURAL     COMMUNICA- 
TIONS    IN    WAR-TIME 


XVI 

SUPERNATURAL  COMMUNICATIONS  IN 
WAR-TIME 

I 

IN  A  volume  entitled  The  Unknown 
Guest,  published  not  long  ago,  among 
other  essays  I  devoted  one  in  particu- 
lar1 to  certain  phenomena  of  intuition, 
clairvoyance  or  clairaudience,  vision  at 
great  distance  and  even  vision  of  the  future. 
These  phenomena  were  grouped  together 
under  the  somewhat  unsuitable  and  none 
too  well-constructed  title  of  "psychometry," 
which,  to  borrow  Dr.  Maxwell's  excellent 
definition,  is  "the  faculty  possessed  by  cert- 
ain persons  of  placing  themselves  in  re- 
lation, either  spontaneously  or,  for  the 
most   part,    through   the   intermediary   of 

1  Chap,  ii.:  "Psychometry." 

199 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

some  object,  with  unknown  and  often  very 
distant  things  and  people." 

The  existence  of  this  faculty  is  no  longer 
seriously  denied  by  any  one  who  has  given 
some  little  attention  to  metapsychics;  and 
it  is  easily  verified  by  those  who  will  take 
the  necessary  trouble,  for  its  possessors, 
though  few  in  number,  are  not  inaccessible. 
It  has  been  the  subject  of  many  experi- 
ments and  of  a  few  treatises,  among  which 
I  will  name  one  b'y  M.  Duchatel, 
Enquete  sur  des  cas  de  psychometrie,  and 
Dr.  Osty's  recent  book,  Lucidite  et 
intuition,  which  is  the  most  complete  and 
searching  work  that  we  have  had  upon  this 
question  until  now. 

Psychometry  is  one  of  the  most  curious 
faculties  of  our  subconsciousness  and  doubt- 
less contains  the  clue  to  many  of  those 
manifestations  which  appear  to  proceed 
from  another  world.  Let  us  see,  with  the 
aid  of  a  living  example,  how  it  is  employed. 

200 


Supernatural  Communications 

One  of  the  best  mediums  of  this  class 
is  a  lady  to  whom  I  referred  in  The  Un- 
known Guest  as  Mme.  M.  Her  visitor 
gives  her  an  object  of  some  kind  that 
has  belonged  to  or  been  touched  or  han- 
dled by  the  person  about  whom  he  pro- 
poses to  question  her.  Mme.  M.  oper- 
ates in  a  state  of  trance;  but  there  are 
other  celebrated  psychometers  who  retain 
all  their  normal  consciousness,  so  that  the 
hypnotic  or  somnambulistic  state  is  not, 
generally  speaking,  by  any  means  indispen- 
sable when  we  wish  to  arouse  this  extraor- 
dinary clairvoyance. 

After  placing  the  object,  usually  a  let- 
ter, in  the  medium's  hands,  you  say  to  her: 

"I  wish  you  to  put  yourself  in  com- 
munication with  the  writer  of  this  letter," 
or  "the  owner  of  this  article,"  as  the  case 
may  be. 

Forthwith  the  medium  not  only  per- 
ceives the  person  in  question,  his  physical 


201 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

appearance,  his  character,  his  habits,  his  in- 
terests, his  state  of  health,  but  also,  in  a 
series  of  swift  and  changing  visions  that 
follow  one  another  like  the  pictures  of  a 
cinematograph,  sees  and  describes  exactly 
that  person's  environment,  the  surrounding 
country,  the  rooms  in  which  he  lives,  the 
people  who  live  with  him  and  who  wish 
him  well  or  ill,  the  mentality  and  the  most 
secret  and  unexpected  intentions  of  all  the 
various  characters  that  figure  in  his  exist- 
ence. If  by  means  of  your  questions  you 
direct  her  towards  the  past,  she  traces  the 
whole  course  of  the  subject's  history.  If 
you  turn  her  towards  the  future,  she  seems 
often  to  discover  it  as  clearly  as  the  past. 
But  here  we  must  make  certain  reserva- 
tions. We  are  entering  upon  forbidden 
tracts;  errors  are  almost  the  rule  and 
proper  supervision  is  all  but  impossible.  It 
is  better  therefore  not  to  venture  into  those 
dangerous  regions.     Pending  fuller  inves- 

202 


Supernatural  Communications 

tigation  of  the  question,  we  may  say  that 
the  foretelling  of  the  future,  when  it  claims 
to  cover  a  definite  space  of  time,  is  nearly 
always  illusory.  There  is  scarcely  any 
accuracy  of  vision,  except  when  the  events 
concerned  are  very  near  at  hand,  already 
developing  or  actually  being  consummated; 
and  it  then  becomes  difficult  to  distinguish 
it  from  presentiments,  which  in  their  turn 
are  rarely  true  except  where  the  immedi- 
ate future  is  concerned.  To  sum  up,  in 
the  present  state  of  our  experience,  we  ob- 
serve that  what  the  psychometers  and  clair- 
voyants foretell  us  possesses  a  certain  value 
and  some  chance  of  proving  correct  only 
in  so  far  as  they  put  into  words  our  own 
forebodings,  forebodings  which  again  may 
be  quite  unknown  to  us  and  which  they  dis- 
cover deep  down  in  our  subconsciousness. 
They  confine  themselves — I  speak  of  the 
genuine  mediums — to  bringing  to  light  and 

revealing  to  us  our  unconscious  and  per- 

203 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

sonal  intuition  of  an  event  that  is  hanging 
over  us.  But,  when  they  venture  to  predict 
a  general  event,  such  as  the  result  of  a  war, 
an  epidemic,  an  earthquake,  which  does 
not  interest  ourselves  exclusively  or  which 
is  too  remote  to  come  within  the  somewhat 
limited  scope  of  our  intuition,  they  almost 
invariably  deceive  themselves  and  us. 

It  is  very  difficult  to  fathom  the  nature 
of  this  intuition.  Does  it  relate  to  events 
partly  or  wholly  realized,  but  still  in  a 
latent  state  and  perceived  before  the  know- 
ledge of  them  reaches  us  through  the  norm- 
al channels  of  the  mind  or  brain?  Does 
our  ever-watchful  instinct  of  self-preserva- 
tion notice  causes  or  traces  which  escape 
our  ever-inattentive  and  slumbering  rea- 
son? Are  we  to  believe  in  a  sort  of  auto- 
suggestion that  induces  us  to  realize  things 
which  we  have  been  foretold  or  of  which 
we  have  had  presentiments?  This  is  not 
the  place  to  examine  so  complex  a  problem, 

204 


Supernatural   Communications 

which  brings  us  into  contact  with  all  the 
mysteries  of  subconsciousness  and  the 
preexistence  of  the  future. 

There  remains  another  point  to  which  it 
is  well  to  draw  attention  in  order  to  avoid 
misunderstanding  and  disappointment.  Ex- 
perience shows  us  that  the  medium  per- 
ceives the  person  in  question  quite  clearly, 
in  his  present  and  usual  state,  but  not  ne- 
cessarily in  the  exact  accidental  state  of  the 
moment.  She  will  tell  you,  for  instance, 
that  she  sees  him  ailing  slightly,  lying  in  a 
deck-chair  in  a  garden  of  such  and  such  a 
kind,  surrounded  by  certain  flowers  and 
petting  a  dog  of  a  certain  size  and  breed. 
On  enquiring,  you  will  find  that  all  these 
details  are  strictly  correct,  with  one  excep- 
tion, that  at  that  precise  moment  this 
person,  who  ordinarily  spends  his  time  in 
the  garden,  was  inside  his  house  or  call- 
ing on  a  neighbour.  Mistakes  in  time 
therefore  are  comparatively  frequent  and 

205 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

simultaneity  between  action  and  vision  com- 
paratively rare.  In  short,  the  habitual 
often  masks  the  accidental  action.  This,  I 
insist,  is  a  point  of  which  we  must  not  lose 
sight,  lest  we  ask  of  psychometry  more 
than  it  is  obviously  able  to  give  us. 

2 

Having  said  so  much,  is  it  open  to  us, 
amid  all  the  mental  anguish  and  suffering 
which  this  terrible  war  has  engendered, 
without  profaning  the  sorrow  of  our  fel- 
low-men and  women,  to  give  to  those  who 
are  in  mortal  fear  as  to  the  fate  of  some  one 
whom  they  love  the  hope  of  finding,  among 
those  extrahuman  phenomena  which  have 
been  unjustly  and  falsely  disparaged,  a  con- 
soling gleam  of  light  that  shall  not  be  a 
mere  mockery  or  delusion?  I  venture  to 
declare — and  I  am  doing  so  not  thought- 
lessly, but  after  studying  the  problem  with 
the    conscientious    attention   which    it   de- 

206 


Supernatural  Communications 

mands  and  after  personally  making  a 
number  of  experiments  or  causing  them  to 
be  made  under  my  supervision — I  venture 
to  declare,  without  for  a  moment  losing 
sight  of  the  respect  due  to  grief,  that  we 
possess  here,  in  these  indisputable  cases 
where  no  normal  mode  of  communication 
is  possible,  a  strange  but  real  and  serious 
source  of  information  and  comfort.  I 
could  mention  a  large  number  of  tests  that 
have  been  made,  so  to  speak,  before  my 
eyes  by  absolutely  trustworthy  relatives  or 
friends. 

As  my  space  is  limited,  I  will  relate 
only  one,  which  typifies  and  summarizes 
all  the  others  very  fairly.  A  mother 
had  three  sons  at  the  front.  She  was  hear- 
ing pretty  regularly  from  the  eldest  and 
the  second;  but  for  some  weeks  the  young- 
est, who  was  in  the  Belgian  trenches,  where 
the  fighting  was  very  fierce,  had  given  no 

sign  of  life.    Wild  with  anxiety,  she  was 

207 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

already  mourning  him  as  dead  when  her 
friends  advised  her  to  consult  Mme.  M. 
The  medium  consoled  her  with  the  first 
words  that  she  spoke  and  told  her  that  she 
saw  her  son  wounded,  but  in  no  danger 
whatever,  that  he  was  in  a  sort  of  shed 
fitted  up  as  a  hospital,  that  he  was  being 
very  well  looked  after  by  people  who  spoke 
a  different  language,  that  for  the  time  be- 
ing he  was  unable  to  write,  which  was  a 
great  worry  to  him,  but  that  she  would  re- 
ceive a  letter  from  him  in  a  few  days.  The 
mother  did,  in  fact,  receive  a  card  from 
this  son  a  few  days  later,  worded  a  little 
stiffly  and  curtly  and  written  in  an  un- 
natural hand,  telling  her  that  all  was  well 
and  that  he  was  in  good  health.  Greatly 
relieved,  she  dismissed  the  matter  from 
her  mind,  merely  said  to  herself  that  of 
course  the  medium,  like  all  mediums,  had 
been  wrong  and  thought  no  more  of  it. 
But  two  or  three  messages  following  on  the 

208 


Supernatural  Communications 

first,  all  couched  in  short,  stilted  phrases 
that  seemed  to  be  hiding  something, 
ended  by  alarming  her  so  much  that  she 
was  unable  to  bear  the  strain  any  longer 
and  entreated  her  son  to  tell  her  the  whole 
truth,  whatever  it  might  be.  He  then 
admitted  that  he  had  been  wounded, 
though  not  seriously,  adding  that  he 
was  in  a  sort  of  shed  fitted  up  as  a 
hospital,  where  he  was  being  capitally 
looked  after  by  English  doctors  and 
nurses,  in  short,  just  as  the  medium 
had  seen  him. 

I  repeat,  mediumistic  experience  can 
show  other  instances  of  this  kind.  If  it 
stood  alone,  it  would  be  valueless,  for  it 
might  well  be  explained  by  mere  coinci- 
dence. But  it  forms  part  of  a  very  normal 
series;  and  I  could  easily  enumerate  many 
others  within  my  own  knowledge.  This, 
however,  would  merely  mean  repeating, 
with  uninteresting  variations,  the  essential 

209 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

features  of  the  present  case,  a  proceeding 
for  which  there  would  be  no  excuse  save 
In  a  technical  work. 

Is  success  then  practically  certain?  Yes, 
rash  and  surprising  though  the  statement 
may  seem,  mistakes  upon  the  whole  are 
very  rare,  provided  that  the  medium  be 
carefully  chosen  and  that  the  object  serving 
as  an  intermediary  have  not  passed  through 
too  many  hands,  for  it  will  contain  and  re- 
veal as  many  distinct  personalities  as  it  has 
undergone  contacts.  It  will  be  necessary, 
therefore,  first  to  eliminate  all  these  acces- 
sory personalities,  so  as  to  fix  the  medium's 
attention  solely  on  the  subject  of  the  con- 
sultation. On  the  other  hand,  we  must 
beware  of  calling  for  details  which  the 
nature  of  the  medium's  vision  does  not 
allow  her  to  give  us.  If  asked,  for  in- 
stance, about  a  soldier  who  is  a  prisoner  in 
Germany,  she  will  see  the  soldier  in  quest- 
ion very  plainly,  will  perceive  his  state  of 

210 


Supernatural  Communications 

health  and  mind,  the  manner  in  which  he  is 
treated,  his  companions,  the  fortress  or 
group  of  huts  in  which  he  is  interned,  the 
appearance  of  the  camp,  of  the  town,  of 
the  surrounding  district;  but  she  will  very 
seldom  indeed  be  able  to  mention  the  name 
of  the  camp,  town  or  district.  In  fact,  she 
can  describe  only  what  she  sees;  and,  un- 
less the  town  or  camp  have  a  board  bear- 
ing its  name,  there  will  be  nothing  to  enable 
her  to  identify  it  with  sufficient  accuracy. 
Let  us  add,  lastly,  that,  with  mediums  in  a 
state  of  trance,  who  are  not  conscious  of 
what  they  are  saying,  we  are  exposed  to 
terrible  shocks.  If  they  see  death,  they 
announce  the  fact  bluntly,  without  suspect- 
ing that  they  are  in  the  presence  of  a 
horror-stricken  mother,  wife  or  sister,  so 
much  so  that,  in  the  case  of  Mme.  M.  parti- 
cularly, it  has  been  found  necessary  to  take 
certain  precautions  to  obviate  any  such 
shock. 

211 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

3 

Now  what  is  the  nature  of  this  strange 

and  incredible  faculty?  In  the  book  which 
I  mentioned  at  the  beginning  of  this  article, 
I  tried  to  examine  the  different  theories 
that  suggested  themselves.  The  argument, 
unfortunately,  is  infinitely  too  long  to  be  re- 
published here,  even  if  I  were  to  compress 
it  ruthlessly.  I  will  give  merely  a  brief 
summary  of  the  conclusions,  or  rather  of 
the  attempted  conclusions,  for  the  mystery, 
like  most  of  the  world's  mysteries,  is  pro- 
bably unfathomable.  After  dismissing  the 
spiritualistic  theory,  which  implies  the  in- 
tervention of  the  dead  or  of  discarnate 
entities  and  is  not  as  ridiculous  as  the  pro- 
fane would  think,  but  which  nothing 
hitherto  has  adequately  confirmed,  we  may 
reasonably  ask  ourselves  first  of  all  whether 
this  faculty  exists  in  us  or  in  the  medium. 
Does  it  simply  decipher,  as  is  probably  the 
case  where  the  future  is  concerned,  the  latent 

212 


Supernatural  Communications 

ideas,  knowledge  and  certainties  which  we 
bear  within  us,  or  does  it  alone,  of  its  own 
initiative  and  independently  of  us,  perceive 
what  it  reveals  to  us?  Experience  seems 
to  show  that  we  must  adopt  the  latter 
hypothesis,  for  the  vision  appears  just  as 
distinctly  when  the  illuminating  object  is 
brought  by  a  third  person  who  knows  no- 
thing and  has  never  heard  of  the  individual 
to  whom  the  object  once  belonged.  It 
seems  therefore  almost  certain  that  the 
strange  virtue  is  contained  solely  in  the 
object  itself,  which  is  somehow  galvanized 
by  a  complementary  virtue  in  the  medium. 
This  being  so,  we  must  presume  that  the 
object,  having  absorbed  like  a  sponge  a 
portion  of  the  spirit  of  the  person  who 
touched  it,  remains  in  constant  communica- 
tion with  him,  or,  more  probably,  that  it 
serves  to  track  out,  among  the  prodigious 
throng  of  human  beings,  the  one  who  im- 
pregnated it  with  his  fluid,  even  as  the  dogs 

213 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

employed  by  the  police — at  least  so  we  are 
told — when  given  an  article  of  clothing  to 
smell,  are  able  to  distinguish,  among  in- 
numerable cross-trails,  that  of  the  man  who 
used  to  wear  the  garment  in  question.  It 
seems  more  and  more  certain  that,  as  cells 
of  one  vast  organism,  we  are  connected 
with  everything  that  exists  by  an  infinitely 
intricate  network  of  waves,  vibrations,  in- 
fluences, currents  and  fluids,  all  nameless, 
numberless  and  unbroken.  Nearly  always, 
in  nearly  all  men,  everything  transmitted 
by  these  invisible  threads  falls  into  the 
depths  of  the  subconsciousness  and  passes 
unperceived,  which  is  not  the  same  as  say- 
ing that  it  remains  inactive.  But  sometimes 
an  exceptional  circumstance,  such  as,  in  the 
present  case,  the  marvellous  sensibility  of  a 
first-rate  medium,  suddenly  reveals  to  us 
the  existence  of  the  infinite  living  network 
by  the  vibrations  and  the  undeniable  opera- 
tion of  one  of  its  threads. 

214 


Supernatural   Communications 

All  this,  I  agree,  sounds  incredible,  but 
really  it  is  hardly  any  more  so  than  the  won- 
ders of  radioactivity,  of  the  Hertzian 
waves,  of  photography,  electricity  or  hyp- 
notism, or  of  generation,  which  condenses 
into  a  single  particle  all  the  physical,  moral 
and  intellectual  past  and  future  of  thou- 
sands of  creatures.  Our  life  would  be  re- 
duced to  something  very  small  indeed  if  we 
deliberately  dismissed  from  it  all  that  our 
understanding  is  unable  to  embrace. 


215 


EDITH     CAVELL 


XVII 

EDITH   CAVELL1 
I 

TO-DAY,  in  honouring  the  memory  of 
Miss  Edith  Cavell,  we  honour  not 
only  the  heroine  who  fell  in  the  midst  of 
her  labours  of  love  and  piety,  we  honour 
also  those,  wherever  they  may  be,  who  have 
accomplished  or  will  yet  accomplish  the 
same  sacrifice  and  who  are  ready,  in  like 
circumstances,  to  face  a  like  death. 

We  are  told  by  Thucydides  that  the 
Athenians  of  the  age  of  Pericles — who,  to 
the  honour  of  humanity  be  it  said,  had 
nothing  in  common  with  the  Athenians  of 
to-day — were  accustomed,  each  winter  du- 
ring their  great  war,  to  celebrate  at  the  cost 
of  the  State  the  obsequies  of  those  who  had 

1  Delivered  in  Paris,  at  the  Trocadero,  18  December, 
1915. 

219 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

perished  in  the  recent  campaign.  The 
bones  of  the  dead,  arranged  according  to 
their  tribes,  were  exhibited  under  a  tent 
and  honoured  for  three  days.  In  the  midst 
of  this  host  of  the  known  dead  stood  an 
empty  bed,  covered  with  tapestry  and  dedi- 
cated to  "the  Invisible,"  that  is,  to  those 
whose  bodies  it  had  been  impossible  to  re- 
cover. Let  us  too,  before  all  else,  in  the 
quiet  of  this  hall,  where  none  but  almost 
religious  words  may  be  heard,  raise  in  our 
midst  such  an  altar,  a  sacred  and  mysteri- 
ous altar,  to  the  invisible  heroines  of  this 
war,  that  is  to  say,  to  all  those  who  have 
died  an  obscure  death  and  have  left  no 
traces  and  also  to  those  who  are  yet  living, 
whose  sacrifices  and  sufferings  will  never 
be  told.  Here,  with  the  eyes  of  the  spirit, 
let  us  gaze  upon  all  the  heroic  deeds  of 
which  we  know;  but  let  us  reserve  an  hon- 
oured place  for  those,  incomparably  more 

numerous  and  perhaps  more  beautiful,  of 

220 


Edith  Cavell 

which  we  as  yet  know  nothing  and,  above 
all,  for  those  of  which  we  shall  never  know, 
for  glory  has  its  injustices  even  as  death 
has  its  fatalities. 

2 
Yet  it  is  hardly  probable  that  among 
these  sacrifices  we  shall  discern  any  more 
admirable  than  that  of  Miss  Edith  Cavell. 
I  need  not  recall  the  circumstances  of  her 
death,  for  they  are  well-known  to  every- 
body and  will  never  be  forgotten.  Des- 
tiny left  nothing  undone  for  the  purest 
glory  to  emerge  from  the  deepest  shadow. 
In  the  depths  of  that  shadow  it  concen- 
trated all  imaginable  hatred,  horror,  vil- 
lainy, cowardice  and  infamy,  so  that  all 
pity,  all  innocent  courage  and  mercy,  all 
well-doing  and  all  sweet  charity  might 
shine  forth  above  it,  as  though  to  show  us 
how  low  men  may  sink  and  how  high  a 
woman  can  rise,  as  though  its  express  and 
visible  intention  had  been  to  trace,  with  a 

221 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

single  gesture,  amid  all  the  sorrows  and 
tHe  rare  beauties  of  this  war,  an  outstand- 
ing and  incomparable  example  which 
should  at  the  same  time  be  an  immortal  and 
consoling  symbol. 

3 

And   one   would   say   that   destiny   had 

taken  pains  to  make  this  symbol  as  truth- 
ful and  as  general  as  possible.  It  did  not 
select  a  dazzling  and  warlike  heroine,  as 
it  would  have  done  in  the  days  of  old :  a  Ju- 
dith, a  Lucretia,  nor  even  a  Joan  of  Arc. 
There  was  no  need  of  resounding  words, 
of  splendid  raiment,  of  tragic  attitudes  and 
accessories,  of  an  imposing  background. 
The  beauty  which  we  find  so  touching  has 
grown  simpler;  it  makes  less  stir  and  wins 
closer  to  our  heart.  And  this  is  why  des- 
tiny sought  out  in  obscurity  a  little  hospital 
nurse,  one  of  many  thousands  of  others. 
The  sight  of  her  unpretentious  portrait 
does  not  tell  one  whether  she  was  rich  or 

222 


Edith  Cavell 

poor,  a  humble  member  of  the  middle 
classes  or  a  great  lady.  She  would  pass 
unnoticed  anywhere  until  the  hour  of  trial, 
when  glory  recognizes  its  elect;  and  it 
seems  as  though  goodness  had  almost  eli- 
minated the  individual  contours  of  her  face, 
so  that  it  might  the  more  closely  resemble 
the  pensive  and  sad  smiling  faces  of  all 
the  good  women  in  the  world. 

Beneath  those  features  one  might  indeed 
have  read  the  hidden  devotion  and  quiet 
heroism  of  all  the  women  who  do  their 
duty,  that  is,  of  those  whom  we  see 
about  us  day  by  day,  working,  hoping, 
keeping  vigil,  solacing  and  succouring 
others,  wearing  themselves  out  without 
complaint,  suffering  in  secret  and  mourning 
their  dead  in  silence. 

4 

She  passed  like  a  flash  of  light  which  for 
one  moment  illumined  that   vast   and   in- 

223 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

numerable  multitude,  confirming  our  con- 
fidence and  our  admiration.  She  has 
added  a  final  beauty  to  the  great  revela- 
tions of  this  war;  for  the  war,  which  has 
taught  us  many  things  that  will  never  fade 
from  our  memory,  has  above  all  revealed 
us  to  ourselves.  In  the  first  days  of  the 
terrible  ordeal,  we  did  not  know  for  cert- 
ain how  men  and  women  would  comport 
themselves.  In  vain  did  we  interrogate 
the  past,  hoping  thereby  to  learn  something 
of  the  future.  There  was  no  past  that 
would  serve  for  a  comparison.  Our  eyes 
were  drawn  back  to  the  present;  and  wc 
closed  them,  full  of  uneasiness.  In  what 
condition  should  we  find  ourselves  facing 
duty,  sacrifice,  suffering  and  death,  after 
so  many  years  of  peace,  well-being  and 
pleasure,  of  heedlessness  and  moral  indif- 
ference? What  had  been  the  vast  and 
invisible  journey  of  the  human  conscience 
and  of  those  secret  forces  which  are  the 

224 


Edith  Cavell 

whole  of  man,  during  this  long  respite, 
when  they  had  never  been  called  upon  to 
confront  fate?  Were  they  asleep,  were 
they  weakened  or  lost,  would  they  respond 
to  the  call  of  destiny,  or  had  they  sunk  so 
deep  that  they  would  never  recover  the 
energy  to  ascend  to  the  surface  of  life? 
There  was  a  moment  of  anguish  and  si- 
lence ;  and  lo,  suddenly,  in  the  midst  of  this 
anguish  and  silence,  the  most  splendid  re- 
sponse, the  most  magnificent  cry  of  resur- 
rection, of  righteousness,  of  heroism  and 
sacrifice  that  the  earth  has  ever  heard  since 
it  began  to  roll  along  the  paths  of  space 
and  time !  They  were  still  there,  the  ideal 
forces !  They  were  mounting  upward,  on 
every  side,  from  the  depths  of  all  those 
swiftly-assembling  souls,  not  merely  intact 
but  more  than  ever  radiant,  more  than  ever 
pure,  more  numerous  and  mightier  than 
everl     To  the  amazement  of  all  of  us, 

who  possessed  them  without  knowing  it, 

225 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

they  had  increased  in  strength  and  stature 
while  apparently  neglected  and  forgotten. 
To-day  there  is  no  longer  any  doubt. 
We  may  expect  all  things  and  hope  all 
things  from  the  men  and  the  women  who 
have  surmounted  this  long  and  grievous 
trial.  If  the  heroism  displayed  by  man  on 
the  battlefield  has  never  been  comparable 
with  that  which  is  being  lavished  at  this 
moment,  we  may  also  say  of  the  women 
that  their  heroism  is  even  more  beyond 
comparison.  We  knew  that  a  certain 
number  of  men  were  capable  of  giving  their 
lives  for  their  country,  for  their  faith  or  for 
a  generous  ideal;  but  we  did  not  realize 
that  all  would  wrestle  with  death  for  end- 
less months,  in  great  unanimous  masses; 
and  above  all  we  did  not  imagine,  or  per- 
haps we  had  to  some  extent  forgotten, 
since  the  days  of  the  great  martyrs,  that 
woman  was  ready  with  the  same  gift  of 

self,  the  same  patience,  the  same  sacrifices, 

226 


Edith  Cavell 

the  same  greatness  of  soul  and  was  about- 
less  perhaps  in  blood  than  in  tears,  for  it 
is  always  on  her  that  sorrow  ends  by  falling 
— to  prove  herself  the  rival  and  the  peer 
of  man. 


227 


THE     LIFE     OF     THE     DEAD 


XVIII 

THE    LIFE    OF    THE    DEAD 

I 

THE  other  day  I  went  to  see  a  woman 
whom  I  knew  before  the  war — she 
was  happy  then — and  who  had  lost  her 
only  son  in  one  of  the  battles  in  the  Ar- 
gonne.  She  was  a  widow,  almost  a  poor 
woman;  and,  now  that  this  son,  her  pride 
and  her  joy,  was  no  more,  she  no  longer 
had  any  reason  for  living.  I  hesitated  to 
knock  at  her  door.  Was  I  not  about  to 
witness  one  of  those  hopeless  griefs  at 
whose  feet  all  words  fall  to  the  ground  like 
shameful  and  insulting  lies?  Which  of  us 
to-day  is  not  familiar  with  these  mournful 
interviews,  this  dismal  duty? 

To  my  great  astonishment,  she  offered 
me  her  hand  with  a  kindly  smile.     Her 

231 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

eyes,  to  which  I  hardly  dared  raise  my 
own,  were  free  of  tears. 

"You  have  come  to  speak  to  me  of  him," 
she  said,  in  a  cheerful  tone;  and  it  was 
as  though  her  voice  had  grown  younger. 

"Alas,  yes !  I  had  heard  of  your  sor- 
sow;  and  I  have  come.  .  ." 

"Yes,  I  too  believed  that  my  unhappi- 
ness  was  irreparable;  but  now  I  know  that 
he  is  not  dead." 

"What!  He  is  not  dead?  Do  you 
mean  that  the  news.  .  .  ?  But  I  thought 
that  the  body.  .  ." 

"Yes,  his  body  is  down  there ;  and  I  have 

even  a  photograph  of  his  grave.     Let  me 

show  it  to  you.    See,  that  cross  on  the  left, 

the  fourth  cross :  that  is  where  they  have 

laid  him.     One  of  his  friends,  who  buried 

him,  sent  me  this  card,  with  all  the  details. 

He  did  not  suffer  any  pain.     There  was 

not  even  a  death-struggle.    And  he  has  told 

me  so  himself.     He  is  quite  astonished  that 

232 


The  Life  of  the  Dead 

death  should  be  so  easy,  so  slight  a  thing. 
.  .  .You  do  not  understand?  Yes,  I  see 
what  it  is :  you  are  just  as  I  used  to  be,  as 
all  the  others  are.  I  do  not  explain  the 
matter  to  the  others;  what  would  be  the 
use?  They  do  not  wish  to  understand. 
But  you,  you  will  understand.  He  is  more 
alive  than  he  ever  was;  he  is  free  and 
happy.  He  does  just  as  he  likes.  He  tells 
me  that  one  cannot  imagine  what  a  release 
death  is,  what  a  weight  it  removes  from 
you,  nor  the  joy  which  it  brings.  He  comes 
to  see  me  when  I  call  him.  He  loves  es- 
pecially to  come  in  the  evening;  and  we 
chat  as  we  used  to  do.  He  has  not  al- 
tered; he  is  just  as  he  was  on  the  day  when 
he  went  away,  only  younger,  stronger, 
handsomer.  We  have  never  been  happier, 
or  more  united,  or  nearer  to  one  another. 
He  divines  my  thoughts  before  I  utter 
them.  He  knows  everything;  he  sees 
everything;  but  he  cannot  tell  me  every- 

233 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

thing  he  knows.  He  says  that  I  must  be 
wanting  to  follow  him  and  that  I  must 
wait  for  my  hour.  And,  while  I  wait,  we 
are  living  in  happiness  greater  than  that 
which  was  ours  before  the  war,  a  happi- 
ness which  nothing  can  ever  trouble 
again.  .   .   ." 

Those  about  her  pitied  the  poor  woman; 
and,  as  she  did  not  weep,  as  she  was  gay 
and  smiling,  they  believed  her  mad. 


Was  she  as  mad  as  they  thought?  At 
the  present  moment,  the  great  questions  of 
the  world  beyond  the  grave  are  pressing 
upon  us  from  every  side.  It  is  probable 
that,  since  the  world  began,  there  have 
never  been  so  many  dead  as  now.  The 
empire  of  death  was  never  so  mighty,  so 
terrible;  it  is  for  us  to  defend  and  enlarge 
the  empire  of  life.  In  the  presence  of  this 
mother,  which  are  right  or  wrong,  those 

234 


The  Life  of  the  Dead 

who  are  convinced  that  their  dead  are  for- 
ever swept  out  of  existence,  or  those  who 
are  persuaded  that  their  dead  do  not  cease 
to  live,  who  believe  that  they  see  them  and 
hear  them?  Do  we  know  what  it  is  that 
dies  in  our  dead,  or  even  if  anything  dies? 
Whatever  our  religious  faith  may  be,  there 
is  at  any  rate  one  place  where  they  cannot 
die.  That  place  is  within  ourselves;  and, 
if  this  unhappy  mother  went  beyond  the 
truth,  she  was  yet  nearer  to  it  than  those 
despairing  ones  who  nourish  the  mournful 
certainty  that  nothing  survives  of  those 
whom  they  loved.  She  felt  too  keenly 
what  we  do  not  feel  keenly  enough.  She 
remembered  too  much;  and  we  do  not 
know  how  to  remember.  Between  the  two 
errors  there  is  room  for  a  great  truth ;  and, 
if  we  have  to  choose,  hers  is  the  error 
towards  which  we  should  lean.  Let  us 
learn  to  acquire  through  reason  that  which 
a  wise  madness  bestowed  on  her.     Let  us 

235 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

learn  from  her  to  live  with  our  dead  and 
to  live  with  them  without  sadness  and  with- 
out terror.  They  do  not  ask  for  tears,  but 
for  a  happy  and  confident  affection.  Let 
us  learn  from  her  to  resuscitate  those  whom 
we  regret.  She  called  to  hers,  while  we 
repulse  ours;  we  are  afraid  of  them  and 
are  surprised  that  they  lose  heart  and  pale 
and  fade  away  and  leave  us  forever.  They 
need  love  as  much  as  do  the  living.  Then 
die,  not  at  the  moment  when  they  sink,  into 
the  grave,  but  gradually  as  they  sink  into 
oblivion ;  and  it  is  oblivion  alone  that  makes 
the  separation  irrevocable.  We  should 
not  allow  it  to  heap  itself  above  them.  It 
would  be  enough  to  vouchsafe  them  each 
day  a  single  one  of  those  thoughts  which 
we  bestow  uncounted  upon  so  many  use- 
less objects:  they  would  no  longer  think 
of  leaving  us;  they  would  remain  around 
us   and  we  should  no   longer  understand 

what  a  tomb  is ;  for  there  is  no  tomb,  how- 

236 


The  Life  of  the  Dead 

ever  deep,  whose  stone  may  not  be  raised 
and  whose  dust  dispersed  by  a  thought. 

There  would  be  no  difference  between 
the  living  and  the  dead  if  we  but  knew  how 
to  remember.  There  would  be  no  more 
dead.  The  best  of  what  they  were  dwells 
with  us  after  fate  has  taken  them  from  us; 
all  their  past  is  ours;  and  it  is  wider  than 
the  present,  more  certain  than  the  future. 
Material  presence  is  not  everything  in  this 
world;  and  we  can  dispense  with  it  and  yet 
not  despair.  We  do  not  mourn  those  who 
live  in  lands  which  we  shall  never  visit,  be- 
cause we  know  that  it  depends  on  us 
whether  we  go  to  find  them.  Let  it  be 
the  same  with  our  dead.  Instead  of  be- 
lieving that  they  have  disappeared  never 
to  return,  tell  yourselves  that  they  are  in 
a  country  to  which  you  yourself  will  as- 
suredly go  soon ;  a  country  not  so  very  far 
away.  And,  while  waiting  for  the  time 
when  you  will  go  there  once  and  for  all, 

237 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

you  may  visit  them  in  thougnt  as  easily  as 
if  they  were  still  in  a  region  inhabited  by 
the  living.  The  memory  of  the  dead  is 
even  more  alive  than  that  of  the  living;  it 
is  as  though  they  were  assisting  our  me- 
mory, as  though  they,  on  their  side,  were 
making  a  mysterious  effort  to  join  hands 
with  us  on  ours.  One  feels  that  they  are 
far  more  powerful  than  the  absent  who 
continue  to  breathe  as  we  do. 

3 
Try  then  to  recall  those  whom  you  have 
lost,  before  it  is  too  late,  before  they  have 
gone  too  far;  and  you  will  see  that  they 
will  come  much  closer  to  your  heart,  that 
they  will  belong  to  you  more  truly,  that 
they  are  as  real  as  when  they  were  in  the 
flesh.  In  putting  off  this  last,  they  have 
but  discarded  the  moments  in  which  they 
loved  us  least  or  in  which  we  did  not  love 

at    all.      Now    they    are    pure;   they    are 

238 


The  Life  of  the  Dead 

clothed  only  in  the  fairest  hours  of  life; 
they  no  longer  possess  faults,  littlenesses, 
oddities;  they  can  no  longer  fall  away,  or 
deceive  themselves,  or  give  us  pain.  They 
care  for  nothing  now  but  to  smile  upon  us, 
to  encompass  us  with  love,  to  bring  us  a 
happiness  drawn  without  stint  from  a  past 
which  they  live  again  beside  us. 


239 


THE     WAR     AND 
THE     PROPHETS 


XIX 

THE    WAR   AND   THE    PROPHETS 

AT  the  end  of  an  essay  occurring  in 
The  Unknown  Guest  and  entitled, 
The  Knowledge  of  the  Future,  in  which 
I  examined  a  certain  number  of  phenomena 
relating  to  the  anticipatory  perception  of 
events,  such  as  presentiments,  premoni- 
tions, precognitions,  predictions,  etc.,  I 
concluded  in  nearly  the  following  terms: 

"To  sum  up,  if  it  is  difficult  for  us  to 
conceive  that  the  future  preexists,  perhaps 
it  is  just  as  difficult  for  us  to  understand 
that  it  does  not  exist;  moreover,  many 
facts  tend  to  prove  that  it  is  as  real  and 
definite  and  has,  both  in  time  and  eternity, 
the  same  permanence  and  the  same  vivid- 
ness as  the  past.  Now,  from  the  moment 
that  it  preexists,  it  is  not  surprising  that 

243 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

we  snould  be  able  to  know  it;  it  is  even 
astonishing,  granted  that  it  overhangs  us 
from  every  side,  that  we  should  not  dis- 
cover it  oftener  and  more  easily." 

Above  all  is  it  astonishing  and  almost 
inconceivable  that  this  universal  war,  the 
most  stupendous  catastrophe  that  has  over- 
whelmed humanity  since  the  origin  of 
things,  should  not,  while  it  was  approach- 
ing, bearing  in  its  womb  innumerable  woes 
which  were  about  to  affect  almost  every 
one  of  us,  have  thrown  upon  us  more 
plainly,  from  the  recesses  of  those  days  in 
which  it  was  making  ready,  its  menacing 
shadow.  One  would  think  that  it  ought 
to  have  overcast  the  whole  horizon  of 
the  future,  even  as  it  will  overcast  the 
whole  horizon  of  the  past.  A  secret  of 
such  weight,  suspended  in  time,  ought 
surely  to  have  weighed  upon  all  our  lives; 
and   presentiments   or   revelations   should 

244 


The  War  and  the  Prophets 

have  arisen  on  every  hand.  There  was 
none  of  these.  We  lived  and  moved  with- 
out uneasiness  beneath  the  disaster  which, 
from  year  to  year,  from  day  to  day,  from 
hour  to  hour,  was  descending  upon  the 
world;  and  we  perceived  it  only  when  it 
touched  our  heads.  True,  it  was  more  or 
less  foreseen  by  our  reason;  but  our  reason 
hardly  believed  in  it;  and  besides  I  am 
not  for  the  moment  speaking  of  the  induc- 
tions of  the  understanding,  which  are  al- 
ways uncertain  and  which  are  resigned  be- 
forehand to  the  capricious  contradictions 
which  they  are  accustomed  daily  to  receive 
from  facts. 

2 

But  I  repeat,  beside  or  above  these  in- 
ductions of  our  everyday  logic,  in  the  less 
familiar  domain  of  supernatural  intuitions, 
of  divination,  prediction  or  prophecy  pro- 
perly so-called,  we  find  that  there  was  prac- 
tically nothing  to  warn  us  of  the  vast  peril. 

245 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

This  does  not  mean  that  there  was  any 
lack  of  predictions  or  prophecies  collected 
after  the  event;  these  number,  it  appears, 
no  fewer  than  eighty-three;  but  none  of 
them,  excepting  those  of  Leon  Sonrel  and 
the  Rector  of  Ars,  which  we  will  examine 
in  a  moment,  is  worthy  of  serious  discus- 
sion. I  shall  therefore  mention,  by  way  of 
a  reminder,  only  the  most  widely  known; 
and,  first  of  all,  the  famous  prophecy  of 
Mayence  or  Strasburg,  which  is  supposed 
to  have  been  discovered  by  a  certain  Jecker 
in  an  ancient  convent  founded  near  May- 
ence by  St.  Hildegard,  of  which  the  original 
text  could  not  be  found  and  of  which  no 
one  until  lately  had  ever  heard.  Then 
there  is  another  prophecy  of  Mayence  or 
Fiensberg,  published  in  the  Neue  Metaphy- 
sische  Rundschau  of  Berlin  in  February, 
191 2,  in  which  the  end  of  the  German  Em- 
pire is  announced  for  the  year  19 13.  Next, 
we   have   various    predictions   uttered   by 

246 


The  War  and  the  Prophets 

Mme.  de  Thebes,  by  Dom  Bosco,  by  the 
Blessed  Andrew  Bobola,  by  Korzenicki, 
the  Polish  monk,  by  Tolstoy,  by  Brother 
Hermann  and  so  on,  which  are  even  less 
interesting;  and  lastly  the  prophecy  of 
"Brother  Johannes,"  published  by  M. 
Josephin  Peladan  in  the  Figaro  of  16 
September,  19 14,  which  contains  no  evi- 
dence of  genuineness  and  must  therefore 
meanwhile  be  regarded  merely  as  an  in- 
genious literary  conceit. 

2 

All  these,  on  examination,  leave  but  a 
worthless  residuum;  but  the  prophecies  of 
the  Rector  of  Ars  and  of  Leon  Sonrel  are 
more  curious  and  worthy  of  a  moment's 
attention. 

Father  Jean-Baptiste  Vianney,  Rector 
of  Ars,  was,  as  everybody  knows,  a  very 
saintly  priest,  who  appears  to  have 
been    endowed    with    extraordinary    me- 

247 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

diumistic  faculties.  The  prophecy  in  quest- 
Ion  was  made  public  in  1862,  three  years 
after  the  miracle-worker's  death,  and  was 
confirmed  by  a  letter  which  Mgr.  Perriet 
addressed  to  the  Very  Rev.  Dom  Grea  on 
the  24th  of  February,  1908.  Moreover,  it 
was  printed,  as  far  back  as  1872,  in  a 
collection  entitled,  Voix  prophetiques,  ou 
signes,  apparitions  et  predictions  modernes. 
It  therefore  has  an  incontestable  date.  I 
pass  over  the  part  relating  to  the  war  of 
1870,  which  does  not  offer  the  same  safe- 
guards ;  but  I  give  that  which  concerns  the 
present  war,  quoting  from  the  1872  text: 

"The  enemies  will  not  go  altogether; 
they  will  return  again  and  destroy  every- 
thing upon  their  passage;  we  shall  not  re- 
sist them,  but  will  allow  them  to  advance; 
and  after  that  we  shall  cut  off  their  provi- 
sions and  make  them  suffer  great  losses. 
They  will  retreat  towards  their  country; 

248 


The  War  and  the  Prophets 

we  shall  follow  them  and  there  will  be 
hardly  any  who  return  home.  Then  we 
shall  take  back  all  that  they  took  from  us 
and  much  more." 

As  for  the  date  of  the  event,  it  is  stated 
definitely  and  rather  strikingly  in  these 
words : 

"They  will  want  to  canonize  me,  but 
there  will  not  be  time." 

Now  the  preliminaries  to  the  canoniza- 
tion of  Father  Vianney  were  begun  in  July, 
1 9 14,  but  abandoned  because  of  the  war. 

I  now  come  to  the  Sonrel  prediction. 
I  will  summarize  it  as  briefly  as  possible 
from  the  admirable  article  which  M.  de 
Vesme  devoted  to  it  in  the  Annates  des 
sciences  psychiques.1 

On  the  3rd  of  June,  19 14 — observe  the 
date — Professor  Charles  Richet  handed  M. 
de  Vesme,   from  Dr.  Amedee  Tardieu,  a 

\August,   September   and  October,   1915. 

249 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

manuscript  of  which  the  following  is  the 
substance:  on  the  23rd  or  24th  of  July, 
1869,  Dr.  Tardieu  was  strolling  in  the  gar- 
dens of  the  Luxembourg  with  his  friend 
Leon  Sonrel,  a  former  pupil  of  the  Higher 
Normal  School  and  teacher  of  natural  phi- 
losophy at  the  Paris  Observatory,  when  the 
latter  had  a  kind  of  vision  in  the  course  of 
which  he  predicted  various  precise  and  act- 
ual episodes  of  the  war  of  1 870,  such  as  the 
collection  on  behalf  of  the  wounded  at  the 
moment  of  departure  and  the  amount  of 
the  sum  collected  in  the  soldiers'  kepis;  in- 
cidents of  the  journey  to  the  frontier;  the 
battle  of  Sedan,  the  rout  of  the  French, 
the  civil  war,  the  siege  of  Paris,  his  own 
death,  the  birth  of  a  posthumous  child, 
the  doctor's  political  career  and  so  on: 
predictions  all  of  which  were  verified,  as 
is  attested  by  numerous  witnesses  who  are 
worthy  of  the  fullest  credence.  But  I  will 
pass  over  this  part  of  the  story  and  con- 

250 


The  War  and  the  Prophets 

sider  only  that  portion  which  refers  to  the 
present  war: 

"I  have  been  waiting  for  two  years,"  to 
quote  the  text  of  Dr.  Tardieu's  manuscript 
of  the  3rd  of  June,  "for  the  sequel  of  the 
prediction  which  you  are  about  to  read.  I 
omit  everything  that  concerns  my  friend 
Leon's  family  and  my  private  affairs. 
Yet  there  is  in  my  life  at  this  moment  a 
personal  matter,  which,  as  always  happens, 
agrees  too  closely  with  general  occurrences 
for  me  to  doubt  what  follows : 

"  'O  my  God!  My  country  is  lost: 
France  is  dead ! .  .  .  What  a  disaster ! .  .  . 
Ah,  see,  she  is  saved !  She  extends  to  the 
Rhine !  O  France,  O  my  beloved  country, 
you  are  triumphant;  you  are  the  queen  of 
nations!...  Your  genius  shines  forth 
over  the  world.  .  .  .  All  the  earth  won- 
ders at  you.  .  .  .' 


» »» 


251 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

These  are  the  words  contained  in  the 

document  written  at  the  Mont-Dore  on 
the  3rd  and  handed  to  M.  de  Vesme 
on  the  13th  of  June  19 14,  at  a  moment 
when  no  one  was  thinking  of  the  ter- 
rible war  which  to-day  is  ravaging  half  the 
world. 

When  questioned,  after  the  declaration 
of  war,  by  M.  de  Vesme  on  the  subject 
of  the  prophetic  phrase,  "I  have  been 
waiting  for  two  years  for  the  sequel  of 
the  prediction  which  you  are  about  to 
read,"  Dr.  Tardieu  replied,  on  the  12th  of 
August : 

"I  have  been  waiting  for  two  years;  and 
I  will  tell  you  why.  My  friend  Leon  did 
not  name  the  year,  but  the  more  general 
events  are  described  simultaneously  with 
the  events  of  my  own  life.  Now  the  events 
which  concern  me  privately  and  which 
were  doubtful  two  years  ago  became  cert- 
ain  in  April   or   May  last.      My   friends 

252 


The  War  and  the  Prophets 

know  that  since  May  last  I  have  been  an- 
nouncing war  as  due  before  September, 
basing  my  prediction  on  coincidences  with 
events  in  my  private  life  of  which  I  do  not 
speak." 

4 

These,  up  to  the  present,  are  the  only 
prophecies  known  to  us  that  deserve  any 
particular  attention.  The  prediction  in 
both  is  timid  and  laconic;  but,  in  those 
regions  where  the  least  gleam  of  light  as- 
sumes extraordinary  importance,  it  is  not 
to  be  neglected.  I  admit,  for  the  rest, 
that  there  has  so  far  been  no  time  to  carry 
out  a  serious  enquiry  on  this  point,  but  I 
should  be  greatly  surprised  if  any  such  en- 
quiry gave  positive  results  and  if  it  did  not 
allowed  us  to  state  that  the  gigantic  event, 
as  a  whole,  as  a  general  event,  was  neither 
foreseen  nor  divined.  On  the  other  hand, 
we  shall  probably  learn,  when  the  enquiry  is 

253 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

completed,  that  hundreds  of  deaths,  acci- 
dents, wounds  and  cases  of  individual  ruin 
and  misfortune,  included  in  the  great  disas- 
ter, were  predicted  by  clairvoyants,  by  me- 
diums, by  dreams  and  by  every  other  man- 
ner of  premonition  with  a  definiteness 
sufficient  to  eliminate  any  kind  of  doubt.  I 
have  said  elsewhere  what  I  think  of  indivi- 
dual predictions  of  this  kind,  which  seem  to 
be  no  more  than  the  reading  of  the  presenti- 
ments which  we  carry  within  us,  presenti- 
ments which  themselves,  in  the  majority  of 
cases,  are  but  the  perception,  by  the  as  yet 
imperfectly  known  senses  of  our  subcon- 
sciousness, of  events,  in  course  of  formation 
or  in  process  of  realization,  which  escape 
the  attention  of  our  understanding.  How- 
ever, it  would  still  remain  to  be  explained 
how  a  wholly  accidental  death  or  wound 
could  be  perceived  by  these  subliminal 
senses  as  an  event  in  course  of  formation. 
In  any  case,  it  would  once  more  be  con- 

254 


The  War  and  the  Prophets 

firmed,  after  this  great  test,  that  the  know- 
ledge of  the  future,  so  soon  as  it  ceases  to 
refer  to  a  strictly  personal  fact  and  one, 
moreover,  not  at  all  remote,  is  always  il- 
lusory, or  rather  impossible. 

Apart  then  from  these  strictly  personal 
cases,  which  for  the  moment  we  will  agree 
to  set  aside,  it  appears  more  than  ever  cert- 
ain that  there  is  no  communication  between 
ourselves  and  the  vast  store  of  events  which 
have  not  yet  occurred  and  which  neverthe- 
less seem  already  to  exist  at  some  place 
where  they  await  the  hour  to  advance  upon 
us,  or  rather  the  moment  when  we  shall 
pass  before  them.  As  for  the  exceptional 
and  precarious  infiltrations  which  belong 
not  merely  to  the  present  that  is  still  un- 
known, veiled  or  disguised,  but  really  to 
the  future,  apart  from  the  two  which  we 
have  just  examined,  which  are  inconclusive, 
I  for  my  part  know  of  but  four  or  five 
that  appear  to  be  rigorously  verified;  and 

255 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

these  I  have  discussed  in  the  essay  al- 
ready mentioned.  For  that  matter,  they 
have  no  bearing  upon  the  present  war. 
They  are,  when  all  is  said,  so  exceptional 
that  they  do  not  prove  much;  at  the  most, 
they  seem  to  confirm  the  idea  that  a  store 
exists  filled  with  future  events  as  real,  as 
distinct  and  as  immutable  as  those  of  the 
past ;  and  they  allow  us  to  hope  that  there 
are  paths  leading  thither  which  as  yet  we 
do  not  know,  but  which  it  will  not  be  for 
ever  impossible  to  discover. 


256 


THE     WILL     OF     EARTH 


XX 

THE    WILL    OF    EARTH 
I 

TO-DAY'S  conflict  is  but  a  revival 
of  that  which  has  not  ceased  to 
drench  the  west  of  Europe  in  blood  since 
the  historical  birth  of  the  continent.  The 
two  chief  episodes  in  the  conflict,  as  we 
all  know,  are  the  invasion  of  Roman  Gaul, 
including  the  north  of  Italy,  by  the  Franks 
and  the  successive  conquests  of  England 
by  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  the  Normans. 
Without  delaying  to  consider  questions  of 
race,  which  are  complex,  uncertain  and  al- 
ways open  to  discussion,  we  may,  regarding 
the  matter  from  another  aspect,  perceive 
in  the  persistency  and  the  bitterness  of  this 
conflict  the  clash  of  two  wills,  of  which  one 
or  the  other  succumbs  for  a  moment,  only 
to  rise  up  again  with  increased  energy  and 

259 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

obstinacy.  On  the  one  hand  is  the  will  of 
earth  or  nature,  which,  in  the  human 
species  as  in  all  others,  openly  favours 
brute  or  physical  force;  and  on  the  other 
hand  is  the  will  of  humanity,  or  at  least 
of  a  portion  of  humanity,  which  seeks  to 
establish  the  empire  of  other  more  subtle 
and  less  animal  forces.  It  is  incontestable 
that  hitherto  the  former  has  always  won 
the  day.  But  it  is  equally  incontestable 
that  its  victory  has  always  been  only  ap- 
parent and  of  brief  duration.  It  has 
regularly  suffered  defeat  in  its  very  tri- 
umph. Gaul,  invaded  and  overrun,  pre- 
sently absorbs  her  victor,  even  as  England 
little  by  little  transforms  her  conquerors. 
On  the  morrow  of  victory,  the  instruments 
of  the  will  of  earth  turn  upon  her  and  arm 
the  hand  of  the  vanquished.  It  is  proba- 
ble that  the  same  phenomenon  would  recur 
once  more  to-day,  were  events  to  follow  the 

course   prescribed  by   destiny.     Germany, 

260 


The  Will  of  Earth 

after  crushing  and  enslaving  the  greater 
part  of  Europe,  after  driving  her  back  and 
burdening  her  with  innumerable  woes, 
would  end  by  turning  against  the  will  which 
she  represents;  and  that  will,  which  until 
to-day  had  always  found  in  this  race  a 
docile  tool  and  its  favourite  accomplices, 
would  be  forced  to  seek  these  elsewhere, 
a  task  less  easy  than  of  old. 

2 

But  now,  to  the  amazement  of  all  those 
who  will  one  day  consider  them  in  cold 
blood,  events  are  suddenly  ascending  the 
irresistible  current  and,  for  the  first  time 
since  we  have  been  in  a  position  to  observe 
it,  the  adverse  will  is  encountering  an  un- 
expected and  insurmountable  resistance.  If 
this  resistance,  as  we  can  now  no  longer 
doubt,  maintains  itself  victoriously  to  the 
end,  there  will  never  perhaps  have  been 
such  a  sudden  change  in  the  history  of  man- 

261 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

kind;  for  man  will  have  gained,  over  the 
will  of  earth  or  nature  or  fatality,  a  tri- 
umph infinitely  more  significant,  more 
heavily  fraught  with  consequences  and  per- 
haps more  decisive  than  all  those  which, 
in  other  provinces,  appear  to  have  crowned 
his  efforts  more  brilliantly. 

Let  us  not  then  be  surprised  that  this 
resistance  should  be  stupendous,  or  that  it 
should  be  prolonged  beyond  anything  that 
our  experience  of  wars  has  taught  us  to 
expect.  It  was  our  prompt  and  easy  de- 
feat that  was  written  in  the  annals  of  des- 
tiny. We  had  against  us  all  the  force  ac- 
cumulated since  the  birth  of  Europe.  We 
have  to  set  history  revolving  in  the  reverse 
direction.  We  are  on  the  point  of  suc- 
ceeding; and,  if  it  be  true  that  intelligent 
beings  watch  us  from  the  vantage-point  of 
other  worlds,  they  will  assuredly  witness 
the  most  curious  spectacle  that  our  planet 
has  offered  them  since  they  discovered  it 

262 


The  Will  of  Earth 

amid  the  dust  of  stars  that  glitters  in  space 
around  it.  They  must  be  telling  them- 
selves in  amazement  that  the  ancient  and 
fundamental  laws  of  earth  are  suddenly 
being  transgressed. 

3i 

Suddenly?  That  is  going  too  far.  This 
transgression  of  a  lower  law,  which  was  no 
longer  of  the  stature  of  mankind,  had  been 
preparing  for  a  very  long  time ;  but  it  was 
within  an  ace  of  being  hideously  punished. 
It  succeeded  only  by  the  aid  of  a  part  of 
those  who  formerly  swelled  the  great  wave 
which  they  are  to-day  resisting  by  our  side, 
as  though  something  in  the  history  of  the 
world  or  the  plans  of  destiny  had  altered, 
or  rather  as  though  we  ourselves  had  at 
last  succeeded  in  altering  that  something 
and  in  modifying  laws  to  which  until  this 
day  we  were  wholly  subject. 

But  it  must  not  be  thought  that  the  con- 

263 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

flict  will  end  with  the  victory.  The  deep- 
seated  forces  of  earth  will  not  be  at  once 
disarmed;  for  a  long  time  to  come  the  in- 
visible war  will  be  waged  under  the  reign 
of  peace.  If  we  are  not  careful,  victory 
may  even  be  more  disastrous  to  us  than 
defeat.  For  defeat,  indeed,  like  previous 
defeats,  would  have  been  merely  a  vic- 
tory postponed.  It  would  have  absorbed, 
exhausted,  dispersed  the  enemy,  by  scatter- 
ing him  about  the  world,  whereas  our  vic- 
tory will  bring  upon  us  a  twofold  peril.  It 
will  leave  the  enemy  in  a  state  of  savage 
isolation  in  which,  thrown  back  upon  him- 
self, cramped,  purified  by  misfortune  and 
poverty,  he  will  secretly  reinforce  his  formi- 
dable virtues,  while  we,  for  our  part,  no 
longer  held  in  check  by  his  unbearable  but 
salutary  menace,  will  give  rein  to  failings 
and  vices  which  sooner  or  later  will  place  us 
at  his  mercy.     Before  thinking  of  peace, 

then,  we  must  make  sure  of  the  future  and 

264 


The  Will  of  Earth 

render  it  powerless  to  injure  us.  We  can- 
not take  too  many  precautions,  for  we  are 
setting  ourselves  against  the  manifest  de- 
sire of  the  power  that  bears  us. 

Thfs  is  why  our  efforts  are  difficult  and 
worthy  of  praise.  We  are  setting  our- 
selves— we  cannot  too  often  repeat  it — 
against  the  will  of  earth.  Our  enemies  are 
urged  forward  by  a  force  that  drives  us 
back.  They  are  marching  with  nature, 
whereas  we  are  striving  against  the  great 
current  that  sweeps  the  globe.  The  earth 
has  an  idea,  which  is  no  longer  ours.  She 
remains  convinced  that  man  is  an  animal  in 
all  things  like  other  animals.  She  has  not 
\et  observed  that  he  is  withdrawing  him- 
self from  the  herd.  She  does  not  yet  know 
that  he  has  climbed  her  highest  mountain- 
peaks.  She  has  not  yet  heard  tell  of  just- 
ice, pity,  loyalty  and  honour;  she  does  not 
realize  what  they  are,  or  confounds  them 

with  weakness,   clumsiness,   fear  and  stu- 

265 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

pidity.  She  has  stopped  short  at  the 
original  certitudes  which  were  indispensa- 
ble to  the  beginnings  of  life.  She  is  lag- 
ging behind  us;  and  the  interval  that  divides 
us  is  rapidly  increasing.  She  thinks  less 
quickly;  she  has  not  yet  had  time  to  under- 
stand us.  Moreover,  she  does  not  reckon 
as  we  do;  and  for  her  the  centuries  are  less 
than  our  years.  She  is  slow  because  she  is 
almost  eternal,  while  we  are  prompt  be- 
cause we  have  not  many  hours  before  us. 
It  may  be  that  one  day  her  thought  will 
overtake  ours;  in  the  meantime,  we  have 
to  vindicate  our  advance  and  to  prove  to 
ourselves,  as  we  are  beginning  to  do,  that 
it  is  lawful  to  be  in  the  right  as  against  her, 
that  our  advance  is  not  fatal  and  that  it 
is  possible  to  maintain  it. 

4 
For  it  is  becoming  difficult  to  argue  that 
earth  or  nature  is  always  right  and  that 

266 


The  Will  of  Earth 

those  who  do  not  blindly  follow  earth's  im- 
pulse are  necessarily  doomed  to  perish. 
We  have  learnt  to  observe  her  more  at- 
tentively and  we  have  won  the  right  to 
judge  her.  We  have  discovered  that,  far 
from  being  infallible,  she  is  continually 
making  mistakes.  She  gropes  and  hesi- 
tates. She  does  not  know  precisely  what 
she  wants.  She  begins  by  making  stupen- 
dous blunders.  She  first  peoples  the  world 
with  uncouth  and  incoherent  monsters,  not 
one  of  which  is  capable  of  living;  these  all 
disappear.  Gradually  she  acquires,  at  the 
cost  of  the  life  which  she  creates,  an  ex- 
perience that  is  the  cruel  fruit  of  the  im- 
measurable suffering  which  she  unfeelingly 
inflicts.  At  last  she  grows  wiser,  curbs  and 
amends  herself,  corrects  herself,  returns 
upon  her  footsteps,  repairs  her  errors,  ex- 
pending her  best  energies  and  her  highest 
intelligence  upon  the  correction.  It  is  in- 
contestable that  she  is  improving  her  me- 

267 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

thods,  that  she  is  more  skillful,  more  pru- 
dent, less  extravagant  than  at  the  outset. 
And  yet  the  fact  remains  that,  in  every 
department  of  life,  in  every  organism, 
down  to  our  own  bodies,  there  is  a  survival 
of  bad  workmanship,  of  twofold  functions, 
of  oversights,  changes  of  intention,  ab- 
surdities, useless  complications  and  mean- 
ingless waste.  We  therefore  have  no  rea- 
son to  believe  that  our  enemies  are  in  the 
right  because  earth  is  with  them.  Earth 
does  not  possess  the  truth  any  more  than 
we  do.  She  seeks  it,  even  as  we  do,  and 
discovers  it  no  more  readily.  She  seems 
to  know  no  more  than  we  whither  she  is 
going  nor  whither  she  is  being  led  by  that 
which  leads  all  things.  We  must  not 
listen  to  her  without  enquiry;  and  we 
need  not  distress  ourselves  or  despair  be- 
cause we  are  not  of  her  opinion.  We 
are  not  dealing  with  an  infallible  and  un- 
changeable wisdom,  to  oppose  which  in  our 

268 


The  Will  of  Earth 

thoughts  would  be  madness.  We  are  act- 
ually proving  to  her  that  it  is  she  who  is 
in  the  wrong;  that  man's  reason  for  exist- 
ence is  loftier  than  that  which  she  provi- 
sionally assigned  to  him ;  that  he  is  already 
outstripping  all  that  she  foresaw;  and  that 
she  does  wrong  to  delay  his  advance.  She 
is,  for  that  matter,  full  of  goodwill,  is  able 
on  occasion  to  recognize  her  mistakes  and 
to  obviate  their  disastrous  results  and  by 
no  means  takes  refuge  in  majestic  and  in- 
flexible self-conceit.  If  we  are  able  to 
persevere,  we  shall  be  able  to  convince  her. 
This  will  take  much  time,  for,  I  repeat, 
she  is  slow,  though  in  no  wise  obsti- 
nate. It  will  take  much  time  because  a 
very  long  future  is  in  question,  a  very  great 
change  and  the  most  important  victory  that 
man  has  ever  hoped  to  win. 


269 


FOR     POLAND 


XXI 

FOR   POLAND 
I 

THE  Allies  have  entered  into  a  solemn 
compact  that  none  of  them  will  con- 
clude a  separate  peace.  They  undertook 
recently,  by  an  equally  irrevocable  conven- 
tion, that  they  would  not  lay  down  their 
arms  until  Belgium  was  delivered.  These 
two  acts,  one  of  prudence,  the  other  of 
elementary  justice,  appear  at  first  sight 
superfluous.  Yet  they  were  necessary.  It 
is  well  that  nations,  even  more  than  men, 
because  their  conscience  is  less  stable, 
should  secure  themselves  against  the  mis- 
takes and  weakness  and  ingratitude  which 
too  often  accompany  strife  and  which  even 
more  often  follow  victory.  To-morrow 
they  will  do  for  Servia  what  they  have 
done  in  the  case  of  Belgium;  but  there  is 

273 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

a  third  victim,  of  whom  too  little  is  said, 
who  has  the  same  rights  as  the  other  two; 
and  to  forget  her  would  forever  attaint 
the  honour  and  the  justice  of  those  who 
took  up  arms  only  in  the  name  of  justice 
and  honour. 

2 

I  need  not  recall  the  fate  of  Poland.  It 
is  in  certain  respects  more  tragic  and  more 
pitiful  than  that  of  Belgium  or  of  Servia. 
She  had  not  even  the  opportunity  to  choose 
between  dishonour  and  annihilation. 

Three  successive  acts  of  injustice,  which 
were,  until  to-day,  the  most  shameful  re- 
corded by  history,  deprived  her  of  the 
glory  of  that  heroic  choice  which  she  would 
have  made  in  the  same  spirit,  for  she  had 
already  thrice  made  it  in  the  past,  a  choice 
which  this  day  sustains  and  consoles  her 
two  martyred  sisters  in  their  profoundest 
tribulations.  It  would  be  too  unjust  if  an 
ancient   injustice,   which   even   yet  weighs 

274 


For  Poland 

upon  the  memory  and  the  conscience  of 
Europe,  should  become  the  sole  reason  of 
yet  a  last  iniquity,  which  this  time  would 
be  inexpiable. 

3 

True,    the    Grand-duke    Nicolas    made 

noble  and  generous  promises  to  Poland; 
and  these  promises  were  repeated  at  the 
opening  of  the  Duma.  This  is  good  and 
shows  the  irresistible  force  of  the  awaken- 
ing conscience  of  a  great  empire;  but  it  is 
not  enough.  Such  promises  involve  only 
those  who  make  them ;  they  do  not  bind  a 
nation.  We  will  not  insult  Russia  by 
doubting  her  intentions;  but  among  all  the 
certainties  which  history  teaches  us  there 
is  one  that  has  been  acquired  once  and  for 
all;  and  this  is  that  in  politics  and  inter- 
national morality  intentions  count  for  no- 
thing and  that  a  promise,  made  by  no  mat- 
ter what  nations,  will  be  kept  only  if  those 
who  make  it  also  render  it  impossible  for 

275 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

themselves  to  do  otherwise  than  keep  it. 
For  the  rest,  the  question  at  present  is  not 
one  of  intentions,  nor  confidence,  nor  pity, 
nor  even  of  interest.  Others  have  spoken 
and  will  speak  again,  better  than  I  could, 
of  Poland's  terrible  distress  and  of  the  dan- 
ger, which  is  far  more  formidable  and  far 
more  imminent  than  is  generally  believed, 
of  those  German  intrigues  which  are  seek- 
ing to  seduce  from  us  and,  despite  them- 
selves, to  turn  against  us  twenty  millions 
of  desperate  people  and  nearly  a  million 
soldiers,  who  will  die,  perhaps,  rather  than 
join  our  enemies,  but  who,  in  any  case,  can- 
not fight  in  our  ranks  as  they  would  have 
done  had  the  word  for  which  they  are 
waiting  in  their  anguish  been  spoken  be- 
fore it  was  too  late. 

4 
But,  however  grave  the  peril,  we  are,  I 

repeat,  far  less  concerned  with  this  at  the 

276 


For  Poland 

present  moment  than  with  the  question  of. 
justice.  Poland  has  an  absolute  and  sacred 
right  to  be  treated  even  as  the  other  two 
victims  of  this  war  of  justice.  She  is  their 
equal,  she  is  of  the  same  rank  and  on  the 
same  level.  She  has  suffered  what  they 
have  suffered,  for  the  same  cause,  in  the 
same  spirit  and  with  the  same  heroism;  and 
if  she  has  not  done  what  the  two  others 
have  done  it  is  because  only  the  ingratitude 
of  all  those  whom  she  had  more  than  once 
saved,  together  with  one  of  the  greatest 
crimes  in  history,  prevented  her  from  doing 
so. 

It  is  time  for  the  Europe  of  to-day  to 
repair  the  iniquity  committed  by  the  Eu- 
rope of  other  days.  We  are  nothing,  we 
are  no  better  than  our  enemies,  we  have  no 
title  to  deliver  millions  of  innocent  men  to 
death,  unless  we  stand  for  justice.  The 
idea  of  justice  alone  must  rule  all  that  we 
undertake,  for  we  are  united,  we  have  risen 

277, 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

and  we  exist  only  in  its  name.  At  this 
moment  we  occupy  all  the  pinnacles  of  this 

justice,  to  which  we  have  brought  such  an 
impulse,  such  sacrifices  and  such  heroism  as 
we  shall  perhaps  never  behold  again.  We 
shall  never  rise  higher;  let  us  then  form 
at  this  present  time  resolutions  which  will 
forbid  us  to  descend;  and  Europe  would 
descend,  to  a  depth  greater  than  was  hers 
in  the  unpardonable  hour  of  the  partition 
of  Poland,  did  she  not  before  all  else  re- 
pair the  immense  fault  which  she  committed 
when  she  had  not  yet  discovered  her  con- 
science and  did  not  yet  know  what  she 
knows  to-day. 


278 


THE     MIGHT     OF    THE     DEAD 


XXII 

THE     MIGHT     OF    THE    DEAD 
I. 

IN  A  Beleaguered  City,  a  little  book 
which,  in  its  curious  way,  is  a  master- 
piece, Mrs.  Oliphant  shows  us  the  dead  of 
a  provincial  town  suddenly  waxing  indig- 
nant over  the  conduct  and  the  morals  of 
those  inhabiting  the  town  which  they  had 
founded.  They  rise  up  in  rebellion,  invest 
the  houses,  the  streets,  the  market-places 
and,  by  the  pressure  of  their  innumerable 
multitude,  all-powerful  though  invisible, 
repulse  the  living,  thrust  them  out  of  doors 
and,  setting  a  strict  watch,  permit  them  to 
return  to  their  roof-trees  only  after  a  treaty 
of  peace  and  penitence  has  purified  their 

281 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

hearts,  atoned  for  their  offences  and  en- 
sured a  more  worthy  future. 

There    is    undoubtedly    a    great    truth 
beneath  this  fiction,  which  appears  too  far- 
fetched because  we  perceive  only  material 
and   ephemeral    realities.     The    dead   live 
and  move  in  our  midst  far  more  really  and 
effectually    than    the     most    venturesome 
imagination  could  depict.    It  is  very  doubt- 
ful whether  they  remain  in  their  graves. 
It  even  seems  increasingly  certain  that  they 
never   allowed   themselves  to  be   confined 
there.     Under  the   tombstones  where  we 
believe  them  to  lie  imprisoned  there  are 
only   a    few    ashes,   which   are   no   longer 
theirs,  which  they  have  abandoned  without 
regret  and  which,  in  all  probability,  they 
no   longer   deign   to   remember.    All  that 
was  themselves  continues  to  have  its  being 
in  our  midst.  How  and  under  what  aspect? 
After  all  these  thousands,  perhaps  millions, 
of  years,  we   do  not  yet  know;   and  no 

282 


The  Might  of  the  Dead 

religion  has  been  able  to  tell  us  with  satis- 
fying certainty,  though  all  have  striven  to 
do  so;  but  we  may,  by  means  of  certain 
tokens,  hope  to  learn. 

Without  further  considering  a  mighty 
but  obscure  truth,  which  it  is  for  the 
moment  impossible  to  state  precisely  or  to 
render  palpable,  let  us  concern  ourselves 
with  one  which  cannot  be  disputed.  As  I 
have  said  elsewhere,  whatever  our  religious 
faith  may  be,  there  is  in  any  case  one  place 
where  our  dead  cannot  perish,  where  they 
continue  to  exist  as  really  as  when  they 
were  in  the  flesh  and  often  more  actively; 
and  this  living  abiding-place,  this  conse- 
crated spot,  which  for  those  whom  we  have 
lost  becomes  heaven  or  hell  according  as 
we  draw  close  to  or  depart  from  their 
thoughts  and  their  desires,  is  in  us. 

And  their  thoughts  and  their  desires  are 
always  higher  than  our  own.  It  is,  there- 
fore,    by     uplifting     ourselves     that    we 

283 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

approach  them.  It  is  we  who  must  take 
the  first  steps,  for  they  can  no  longer 
descend,  whereas  it  is  always  possible  for 
us  to  rise ;  for  the  dead,  whatever  they  have 
been  in  life,  become  better  than  the  best  of 
us.  The  least  worthy  of  them,  in  shedding 
the  body,  have  shed  its  vices,  its  littlenesses, 
its  weaknesses,  which  soon  pass  from  our 
memory  as  well;  and  the  spirit  alone 
remains,  which  is  pure  in  every  man  and 
able  to  desire  only  what  is  good.  There 
are  no  wicked  dead  because  there  are  no 
wicked  souls.  This  is  why,  as  we  purify 
ourselves,  we  restore  life  to  those  who  were 
no  more  and  transform  our  memory,  which 
they  inhabit,  into  heaven. 

2. 

And  what  was  always  true  of  all  the 
dead  is  far  more  true  to-day  when  only  the 
best  are  chosen  for  the  tomb.  In  the  region 
which  we  believe  to  be  under  the  earth, 

284 


The  Might  of  the  Dead 

which  we  call  the  kingdom  of  the  shades 
and  which  in  reality  is  the  ethereal  region 
and  the  kingdom  of  light,  there  are  at  this 
moment  perturbations  no  less  profound 
than  those  which  we  are  experiencing  on 
the  surface  of  our  earth.  The  young  dead 
are  invading  it  from  every  side;  and  since 
the  beginning  of  this  world  they  have  never 
been  so  numerous,  so  full  of  energy  and 
zeal.  Whereas  in  the  customary  sequence 
of  the  years  the  dwelling-place  of  those 
who  leave  us  receives  only  weary  and 
exhausted  lives,  there  is  not  one  in  this 
incomparable  host  who,  to  borrow  Pericles' 
expression,  "has  not  departed  from  life  at 
the  height  of  glory."  Not  one  of  them 
but  has  gone  up,  not  down,  to  his  death 
clad  in  the  greatest  sacrifice  that  man  can 
make  for  an  idea  which  cannot  die.  All 
that  we  have  hitherto  believed,  all  that  we 
have  striven  to  attain  beyond  ourselves,  all 
that  has  lifted  us  to  the  level  at  which  we 

285 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

stand,  all  that  has  overcome  the  evil  days 
and  the  evil  instincts  of  human  nature :  all 
this  could  have  been  no  more  than  lies  and 
illusions  if  such  men  as  these,  such  a  mass 
of  merit  and  of  glory,  were  really 
annihilated,  had  really  forever  disappeared, 
were  forever  useless  and  voiceless,  forever 
without  influence  in  a  world  to  which  they 
have  given  life. 

3- 

It  is  hardly  possible  that  this  could  be 
so  as  regards  the  external  survival  of  the 
dead;  but  it  is  absolutely  certain  that  it  is 
not  so  as  regards  their  survival  in  ourselves. 
Here  nothing  is  lost  and  no  one  perishes. 
Our  memories  are  to-day  peopled  by  a 
multitude  of  heroes  struck  down  in  the 
flower  of  their  youth  and  very  different 
from  the  pale  and  languid  cohort  of  the 
past,  composed  almost  wholly  of  the  sick 
and  the  aged,  who  already  had  ceased  to 

286 


The  Might  of  the  Dead 

exist  before  leaving  the  earth.  We  must 
tell  ourselves  that  now,  in  each  of  our 
homes,  both  in  our  cities  and  in  the  country- 
side, both  in  the  palace  and  in  the  meanest 
hovel,  there  lives  and  reigns  a  young  dead 
man  in  the  glory  of  his  strength.  He  fills 
the  poorest,  darkest  dwelling  with  a  splen- 
dour of  which  it  had  never  ventured  to 
dream.  His  constant  presence,  imperious 
and  inevitable,  diffuses  through  it  and 
maintains  a  religion  and  ideas  which  it  had 
never  known  there  before,  hallows  every- 
thing around  it,  forces  the  eyes  to  look 
higher  and  the  spirit  to  refrain  from 
descending,  purifies  the  air  that  is  breathed 
and  the  speech  that  is  held  and  the  thoughts 
that  are  mustered  there  and,  little  by  little, 
ennobles  and  uplifts  a  whole  people  on  a 
scale  of  unexampled  vastness. 

4- 

Such   dead  as  these  have  a  power   as 

287 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

profound,  as  fruitful  as  life  and  less 
precarious.  It  is  terrible  that  this  experi- 
ence should  have  been  made,  for  it  is  the 
most  pitiless  and  the  first  in  such  enormous 
masses  that  mankind  has  ever  undergone; 
but,  now  that  the  ordeal  is  almost  over,  we 
shall  soon  derive  from  it  the  most  un- 
expected fruits.  It  will  not  be  long  before 
we  see  the  differences  increase  and  the 
destinies  diverge  between  the  nations  which 
have  acquired  all  these  dead  and  all  this 
glory  and  those  which  were  deprived  of 
them;  and  we  shall  perceive  with  amaze- 
ment that  those  nations  which  have  lost  the 
most  are  those  which  have  kept  their  riches 
and  their  men.  There  are  losses  which  are 
inestimable  gains;  and  there  are  gains 
whereby  the  future  is  lost.  There  are  dead 
whom  the  living  cannot  replace  and  the 
mere  thought  of  whom  accomplishes  things 
which  their  bodies  could  not  perform. 
There    are    dead   whose   energy   surpasses 

288 


The  Might  of  the  Dead 

death  and  recovers  life;  and  we  are  almost 
every  one  of  us  at  this  moment  the  man- 
dataries of  a  being  greater,  nobler,  graver, 
wiser  and  more  truly  living  than  ourselves. 
With  all  those  who  accompany  him,  he  will 
be  our  judge,  if  it  is  the  fact  that  the  dead 
weigh  the  soul  of  the  living  and  that  on 
their  verdict  our  happiness  depends.  He 
will  be  our  guide  and  our  protector,  for  it 
is  the  first  time,  since  history  has  revealed 
its  misfortunes  to  us,  that  man  has  felt  so 
great  a  host  of  such  mighty  dead  soaring 
above  his  head  and  speaking  within  his 
heart. 

We  shall  live  henceforward  under  their 
laws,  which  will  be  more  just  but  not  more 
severe  nor  more  cheerless  than  ours ;  for  it 
is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  dead  love 
nothing  but  gloom;  they  love  only  the 
justice  and  the  truth  which  are  the  eternal 

289 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

forms  of  happiness.  From  the  depths  of 
this  justice  and  this  truth  in  which  they  are 
all  immersed,  they  will  help  us  to  destroy 
the  great  falsehoods  of  existence :  for  war 
and  death,  if  they  sow  innumerable  miseries 
and  misfortunes,  have  at  least  the  merit  of 
destroying  as  many  lies  as  they  occasion 
evils.  And  all  the  sacrifices  which  they 
have  made  for  us  will  have  been  in  vain — 
and  this  is  not  possible — if  they  do  not 
first  of  all  bring  about  the  fall  of  the  lies 
on  which  we  live  and  which  it  is  not 
necessary  to  name,  for  each  of  us  knows  his 
own  and  is  ashamed  of  them  and  will  be 
eager  to  make  an  end  of  them.  They  will 
teach  us,  before  all  else,  from  the  depths  of 
our  hearts  which  are  their  living  tombs,  to 
love  those  who  outlive  them,  since  it  is  in 
them  alone  that  they  wholly  exist. 


290 


WHEN    THE     WAR     IS     OVER 


B 


XXIII 

WHEN  THE  WAR  IS  OVER 
I 

EFORE  closing  this  book,  I  wish  to 
weigh  for  the  last  time  in  my  con- 
science the  words  of  hatred  and  maledic- 
tion which  it  has  made  me  speak  in  spite 
of  myself.  We  have  to  do  with  the 
strangest  of  enemies.  He  has  knowingly 
and  deliberately,  while  in  the  full  possess- 
ion of  his  faculties  and  without  necessity 
or  excuse,  revived  all  the  crimes  which  we 
supposed  to  be  forever  buried  in  the  bar- 
barous past.  He  has  trampled  under  foot 
all  the  precepts  which  man  had  so  pain- 
fully won  from  the  cruel  darkness  of  his 
beginnings;  he  has  violated  all  the  laws  of 
justice,  humanity,  loyalty  and  honour,  from 
the  highest,  which  are  almost  godlike,  to 
the  simplest,  the  most  elementary,  which 

293 


The  Wrack  of  the  Strom 

still  belong  to  the  lower  worlds.  There 
is  no  longer  any  doubt  on  this  point :  it  has 
been  proved  over  and  over  again  until  we 
have  attained  a  final  certitude. 

But  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  no  less  cert- 
ain that  he  has  displayed  virtues  which  it 
would  be  unworthy  of  us  to  deny;  for  we 
honour  ourselves  in  recognizing  the  valour 
of  those  whom  we  are  fighting.  He  has 
gone  to  his  death  in  deep,  compact,  disci- 
plined masses,  with  a  blind,  hopeless,  ob- 
stinate heroism  of  which  no  such  lurid 
example  had  ever  yet  been  known,  a  heroism 
which  has  many  times  compelled  our  ad- 
miration and  our  pity.  He  has  known  how 
to  sacrifice  himself,  with  unprecedented 
and  perhaps  unequalled  abnegation,  to  an 
idea  which  we  know  to  be  false,  inhuman 
and  even  somewhat  mean,  but  which  he 
believes  to  be  just  and  lofty;  and  a  sacri- 
fice  of  this  kind,   whatever  its   object,    is 

always  the  proof  of  a  force  which  survives 

294 


When  the  War  Is  over 

those  who  devote  themselves  to  making  it 
and  must  command  respect. 

I  know  very  well  that  this  heroism  is  not 
like  the  heroism  which  we  love.  For  us, 
heroism  must  before  all  be  voluntary,  freed 
from  any  constraint,  active,  ardent,  eager 
and  spontaneous;  whereas  with  them  it  has 
mingled  with  it  a  great  deal  of  servility, 
passiveness,  sadness,  gloomy,  ignorant, 
massive  submission  and  rather  base  fears. 
It  is  nevertheless  the  fact  that,  in  the  mo- 
ment of  supreme  peril,  little  remains  of  all 
these  distinctions  and  that  no  force  in  the 
world  can  drive  to  its  death  a  people  which 
does  not  bear  within  itself  the  strength  to 
confront  it.  Our  soldiers  make  no  mis- 
take upon  this  point.  Question  the  men 
returning  from  the  trenches :  they  detest 
the  enemy,  they  abhor  the  aggressor,  the 
unjust  and  arrogant  aggressor,  uncouth, 
too  often  cruel  and  treacherous;  but  they 
do  not  hate  the  man:  they  do  him  justice; 

295 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

they  pity  him;  and,  after  the  battle,  in  the 
defenceless  wounded  soldier  or  disarmed 
prisoner  they  recognize,  with  astonishment, 
a  brother  in  misfortune  who,  like  them- 
selves, is  submitting  to  duties  and  laws 
which,  like  themselves,  he  too  believes  lofty 
and  necessary.  Under  the  insufferable 
enemy  they  see  an  unhappy  man  who  also 
is  bearing  the  burden  of  life.  They  for- 
get the  things  that  divide  them  to  recall 
only  those  which  unite  them  in  a  common 
destiny;  and  they  teach  us  a  great  lesson. 
Better  than  ourselves,  who  are  removed 
from  danger,  at  the  contact  of  profound  and 
fearful  verities  and  realities  they  are  al- 
ready beginning  to  discern  something  that 
we  cannot  yet  perceive;  and  their  obscure 
instinct  is  probably  anticipating  the  judg- 
ment of  history  and  our  own  judgment, 
when  we  see  more  clearly.  Let  us  learn 
from  them  to  be  just  and  to  distinguish 
that  which  we  are  bound  to  despise  and 

296 


When  the  War  Is  over 

loathe  from  that  which  we  may  pity,  love 
and  respect. 

Setting  aside  the  unpardonable  aggres- 
sion and  the  inexpiable  violation  of  treaties, 
this  war,  despite  its  insanity,  has  come  near 
to  being  a  bloody  but  magnificent  proof  of 
greatness,  heroism  and  the  spirit  of  sacri- 
fice. Humanity  was  ready  to  rise  above 
itself,  to  surpass  all  that  it  had  hitherto 
accomplished.  It  has  surpassed  it.  Never 
before  had  nations  been  seen  capable,  for 
months  on  end,  perhaps  for  years,  of  re- 
nouncing their  repose,  their  security,  their 
wealth,  their  comfort,  all  that  they  pos- 
sessed and  loved  down  to  their  very  life, 
in  order  to  accomplish  what  they  believed 
to  be  their  duty.  Never  before  had  nations 
been  seen  that  were  able  as  a  whole  to  un- 
derstand and  admit  that  the  happiness  of 
each  of  those  who  live  in  this  time  of  trial 
is  of  no  consequence  compared  with  the 
honour  of  those  who  live  no  more  or  the 

297 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

happiness  of  those  who  are  not  yet  alive. 
We  stand  on  heights  that  had  not  been 
attained  before.  And  if,  on  the  enemies' 
side,  this  unexampled  renunciation  had  not 
been  poisoned  at  its  source;  if  the  war 
which  they  are  waging  against  us  had  been 
as  fine,  as  loyal,  as  generous,  as  chivalrous 
as  that  which  we  are  waging  against  them, 
we  may  well  believe  that  it  would  have 
been  the  last  and  that  it  would  have  ended, 
not  in  battle,  but,  like  the  awakening  from 
an  evil  dream,  in  a  noble  and  fraternal 
amazement.  They  have  made  that  impos- 
sible; and  this,  we  may  be  sure,  is  the  dis- 
appointment which  the  future  will  find  it 
most  difficult  to  forgive  them. 

2 

What  are  we  to  do  now  ?  Must  we  hate 
the  enemy  to  the  end  of  time?  The  burden 
of  hatred  is  the  heaviest  that  man  can  bear 
upon  this  earth;  and  we  should  faint  under 

298 


When  the  War  is  Over 

the  weight  of  it.  On  the  other  hand,  we 
do  not  wish  once  more  to  be  the  dupes  and 
victims  of  confidence  and  love.  Here 
again  our  soldiers,  in  their  simplicity, 
which  is  so  clear-seeing  and  so  close  to  the 
truth,  anticipate  the  future  and  teach  us 
what  to  admit  and  what  to  avoid.  We 
have  seen  that  they  do  not  hate  the  man; 
but  they  do  not  trust  him  at  all.  They 
discover  the  human  being  in  him  only  when 
he  is  unarmed.  They  know,  from  bitter 
experience,  that,  so  long  as  he  possesses 
weapons,  he  cannot  resist  the  frenzy  of  de- 
struction, treachery  and  slaughter;  and  that 
he  does  not  become  kindly  until  he  is  ren- 
dered powerless. 

Is  he  thus  by  nature,  or  has  he  been 
perverted  by  those  who  lead  him?  Have 
the  rulers  dragged  the  whole  nation  after 
them,  or  has  the  whole  nation  driven  its 
rulers  on?    Did  the  rulers  make  the  nation 

like   unto   themselves,    or   did   the   nation 

299 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

select  and  support  them  because  they  re- 
sembled itself?  Did  the  evil  come  from 
above  or  below,  or  was  it  everywhere? 
Here  we  have  the  great  and  obscure  point 
of  this  terrible  adventure.  It  is  not  easy 
to  throw  light  upon  it  and  still  less  easy 
to  find  excuses  for  it.  If  our  enemies  prove 
that  they  were  deceived  and  corrupted  by 
their  masters,  they  prove,  at  the  same  time, 
that  they  are  less  intelligent,  less  firmly  at- 
tached to  justice,  honour  and  humanity, 
less  civilized,  in  a  word,  than  those  whom 
they  claimed  the  right  to  enslave  in  the 
name  of  a  superiority  which  they  them- 
selves have  proved  not  to  exist ;  and,  unless 
they  can  establish  that  their  errors,  per- 
fidies and  cruelties,  which  can  no  longer  be 
denied,  should  be  imputed  only  to  those 
masters,  then  they  themselves  must  bear 
the  pitiless  weight.  I  do  not  know  how 
they  will  escape  from  this  predicament,  nor 
what   the   future  will   decide,    that    future 

300 


When  the  War  is  Over 

which  is  wiser  than  the  past,  even  as,  in  the 
words  of  an  old  Slav  proverb,  the  dawn  is 
wiser  than  the  eve.  In  the  meanwhile,  let 
us  copy  the  prudence  of  our  soldiers,  who 
know  what  to  believe  far  better  than  we  do. 


301 


THE     MASSACRE 
OF     THE     INNOCENTS 


XXIV 

THE   MASSACRE   OF   THE   INNOCENTS 

The  Massacre  of  the  Innocents  appeared  for  the 
first  time  in  1886,  in  a  little  periodical  called  La  Plei- 
ade  which  some  friends  and  I  had  founded  in  the 
Latin  Quarter  and  which  died  of  inanition  after  its 
sixth  number.  My  reason  for  making  room  in  the 
present  volume  for  these  pages  marking  a  very  modest 
start — they  were  the  first  that  found  their  way  into 
print — is  not  that  I  am  under  any  delusion  as  to  the 
merits  of  this  youthful  work,  in  which  I  had  simply 
aimed  at  reproducing  as  best  I  could  the  different 
episodes  of  a  picture  in  the  Brussels  Museum,  painted 
in  the  sixteenth  century  by  Pieter  Breughel  the  Elder. 
But  it  appeared  to  me  that  circumstances  had  made 
of  this  humble  literary  effort  a  sort  of  prophetic  vision; 
for  it  is  but  too  likely  that  similar  scenes  must  have 
been  repeated  in  more  than  one  of  our  unhappy  Flem- 
ish or  Brabant  villages  and  that  to  describe  them  as 
they  were  lately  enacted  we  should  have  only  to  change 
the  name  of  the  butchers  and  probably,  alas,  to  accent- 
uate their  cruelty,  their  injustice  and  their  hideous- 
ness! — M.  M. 

IT  WAS  close  upon  supper-time,  that 
Friday  the  twenty-sixth  day  of  the 
month  of  December,  when  a  little  shep- 
herd-lad came  into  Nazareth,  sobbing  bit- 
terly. 

Some  peasants  drinking  ale  in  the  Blue 

305 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

Lion  opened  the  shutters  to  look  into  the 
village  orchard  and  observed  the  child  run- 
ning over  the  snow.  They  saw  that  he  was 
Korneliz'  boy  and  cried  from  the  window: 

"What's  the  matter?  Get  home  with 
you  to  bed !" 

But  he  replied  in  terror  that  the  Span- 
iards were  come,  that  they  had  set  fire  to 
the  farm,  hanged  his  mother  among  the 
walnut-trees  and  bound  his  nine  little  sis- 
ters to  the  trunk  of  a  big  tree. 

The  peasants  rushed  out  of  the  inn, 
gathered  round  the  child  and  plied  him 
with  questions.  Then  he  also  told  them 
that  the  soldiers  were  on  horseback  and 
wore  mail,  that  they  had  driven  away  the 
cattle  of  his  uncle  Petrus  Krayer  and  that 
they  would  soon  be  entering  the  forest  with 
the  cows  and  sheep. 

All  ran  to  the  Golden  Sun,  where  Korne- 
liz and  his  brother-in-law  were  also  drink- 
ing their  pot  of  ale;  and  the  inn-keeper 

306 


The  Massacre  of  the  Innocents 

sped  into  the  village,  shouting  that  the 
Spaniards  were  at  hand. 

Then  there  was  a  great  din  in  Nazareth. 
The  women  opened  the  windows  and  the 
peasants  left  their  houses  with  lights  which 
they  put  out  as  soon  as  they  reached  the 
orchard,  where  it  was  bright  as  midday, 
because  of  the  snow  and  the  full  moon. 

They  crowded  round  Korneliz  and 
Krayer  in  the  market-place,  in  front  of  the 
two  inns.  Several  had  brought  their 
pitchforks  and  their  rakes  and  consulted 
one  another,  terror-stricken,  under  the 
trees. 

But,  as  they  knew  not  what  to  do,  one 
of  them  went  to  fetch  the  parish-priest, 
who  owned  Korneliz'  farm.  He  came  out 
of  his  house  with  the  sacristan,  bringing 
the  keys  of  the  church.  All  followed  him 
into  the  churchyard;  and  he  shouted  to 
them  from  the  top  of  the  tower  that  he 
could  see  nothing  in  the  fields  nor  in  the 

307 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

forest,  but  that  there  were  red  clouds  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  his  farm,  though  the 
sky  was  blue  and  full  of  stars  over  all 
the  rest  of  the  country. 

After  deliberating  for  a  long  time  in  the 
churchyard,  they  decided  to  hide  in  the 
wood  through  which  the  Spaniards  would 
have  to  pass  and  to  attack  them  if  they 
were  not  too  many,  so  as  to  recover  Petrus 
Krayer's  cattle  and  the  plunder  which  they 
had  taken  from  the  farm. 

They  armed  themselves  with  pitchforks 
and  spades;  and  the  women  remained  near 
the  church  with  the  priest. 

Seeking  a  suitable  spot  for  their  ambus- 
cade, they  came  to  a  mill  on  the  skirt  of 
the  forest  and  saw  the  farm  burning  amid 
the  starlight.  Here,  under  some  huge 
oaks,  in  front  of  a  frozen  pool,  they  took 
up  their  position. 

A  shepherd  whom  they  called  the  Red 
Dwarf  went  up  the  hill  to  warn  the  miller, 

308 


The  Massacre  of  the  Innocents 

who  had  stopped  his  mill  when  he  saw 
the  flames  on  the  horizon.  He  invited  the 
fellow  in,  however;  and  the  two  of  them 
placed  themselves  at  a  window  to  watch 
the  distance. 

In  front  of  them  the  moon  was  shining 
over  the  burning  farm ;  and  they  saw  a  long 
host  marching  over  the  snow.  When  they 
had  taken  stock  of  it,  the  Dwarf  went  down 
to  those  in  the  forest;  and  presently  they 
descried  four  horsemen  above  a  herd  of 
animals  that  seemed  to  be  cropping  the 
grass. 

As  the  men,  in  their  blue  hose  and  their 
red  cloaks,  were  looking  around  them  on 
the  edge  of  the  pool  and  under  the  snow-lit 
trees,  the  sacristan  pointed  to  a  box-hedge; 
and  they  went  and  hid  behind  it. 

The  cattle  and  the  Spaniards  came  over 
the  ice;  and  the  sheep  on  reaching  the 
hedge  were  already  beginning  to  nibble  at 
the  leaves,  when  Korneliz  broke  through 

309 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

the  bushes;  and  the  others  followed  with 
their  pitchforks  into  the  light.  Then  there 
was  a  great  slaughter  on  the  pond,  while 
the  huddled  sheep  and  the  cows  gazed  at 
the  battle  in  their  midst  and  at  the  moon 
above  them. 

When  the  men  and  the  horses  had  been 
killed,  Korneliz  ran  into  the  meadows 
towards  the  flames;  and  the  others  stripped 
the  dead.  Then  they  went  back  to  the  vil- 
lage with  the  herds.  The  women  watch- 
ing the  gloomy  forest  from  behind  the 
walls  of  the  churchyard  saw  them  ap- 
proaching through  the  trees  and,  with  the 
priest,  hurried  to  meet  them;  and  they  re- 
turned dancing  gleefully  all  amongst  the 
children  and  the  dogs. 

While  they  made  merry  under  the  pear- 
trees  in  the  orchard,  where  the  Red  Dwarf 
hung  up  lanterns  as  a  sign  of  kermis,  they 
consulted  the  priest  as  to  what  they  were 

to  do. 

310 


The  Massacre  of  the  Innocents 

They  at  last  resolved  to  put  a  horse  to 
a  cart  and  fetch  the  bodies  of  the  woman 
and  her  nine  little  daughters  to  the  village. 
The  dead  woman's  sisters  and  the  other 
peasant-women  of  her  family  climbed  into 
it,  as  did  the  priest,  who  was  not  well  able 
to  walk,  being  advanced  in  years  and  very 
stout. 

They  entered  the  forest  once  more  and 
arrived  in  silence  at  the  dazzling  white 
plain,  where  they  saw  the  naked  men  and 
the  horses  lying  on  their  backs  upon  the 
gleaming  ice  among  the  trees.  Then  they 
went  on  to  the  farm,  which  they  could  see 
burning  in  the  distance. 

When  they  came  to  the  orchard  and  to 
the  house  all  red  with  flames,  they  stopped 
at  the  gate  to  mark  the  great  misfortune 
that  had  befallen  the  farmer  in  his  garden. 
His  wife  was  hanging  all  naked  from  the 
branches  of  a  great  walnut-tree;  he  himself 
was  mounting  a  ladder  to  climb  the  tree, 

311 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

around  which  the  nine  little  girls  were 
waiting  for  their  mother  on  the  grass.  Al- 
ready he  was  walking  among  the  huge 
boughs,  when  suddenly  he  saw  the  crowd, 
black  against  the  snow,  watching  him. 
Weeping,  he  made  signs  to  them  to  help 
him ;  and  they  went  into  the  garden.  Then 
the  sacristan,  the  Red  Dwarf,  the  landlord 
of  the  Blue  Lion  and  he  of  the  Golden  Sun, 
the  parish-priest,  with  a  lantern,  and  many 
other  peasants  climbed  into  the  snow-laden 
walnut-tree  to  cut  down  the  corpse,  which 
the  women  of  the  village  received  in  their 
arms  at  the  foot  of  the  tree,  even  as  at  the 
descent  from  the  Cross  of  Our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ. 

The  next  day  they  buried  her;  and 
nothing  else  out  of  the  common  happened 
at  Nazareth  that  week.  But,  on  the  fol- 
lowing Sunday,  hungry  wolves  ran  through 
the  village  after  high  mass  and  it  snowed 
until  noon;  then  the  sun  suddenly  shone  in 

312 


The  Massacre  of  the  Innocents 

the  sky;  and  the  peasants  went  in  to  dinner, 
as  was  their  wont,  and  dressed  for  benedic- 
tion. 

At  that  moment  there  was  no  one  in  the 
market-place,  for  it  was  freezing  cruelly. 
Only  the  dogs  and  hens  remained  under  the 
trees,  where  some  sheep  were  nibbling  at 
a  three-cornered  patch  of  grass,  while  the 
priest's  maid-servant  swept  away  the  snow 
from  the  presbytery-garden. 

Then  a  troop  of  armed  men  crossed  the 
stone  bridge  at  the  end  of  the  village  and 
halted  in  the  orchard.  Some  peasants 
came  out  of  their  houses;  but,  on  recogni- 
zing the  Spaniards,  they  retreated  in  terror 
and  went  to  their  windows  to  see  what 
would  happen. 

There  were  some  thirty  horsemen,  clad 
in  armour,  around  an  old  man  with  a  white 
beard.  Behind  them  they  carried  red  and 
yellow  foot-soldiers,  who  jumped  down  and 
ran  over  the  snow  to  shake  off  their  stiff- 

313 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

ness,  while  several  of  the  men  in  armour 
also  alighted  and  eased  themselves  against 
the  trees  to  which  they  had  fastened  their 
horses. 

Then  they  turned  to  the  Golden  Sun  and 
knocked  at  the  door.  It  was  opened  hesi- 
tatingly; and  they  warmed  themselves  at 
the  fire  and  called  for  ale. 

Next  they  came  out  of  the  inn,  carrying 
pots  and  jugs  and  wheaten  loaves  for  their 
comrades,  who  sat  ranked  around  the  man 
with  the  white  beard,  waiting  in  the  midst 
of  the  lances. 

As  the  street  was  empty,  the  commander 
sent  horsemen  to  the  back  of  the  houses,  to 
guard  the  village  on  its  open  side,  and  or- 
dered the  foot-soldiers  to  bring  to  him  all 
the  children  of  two  years  old  and  under,  to 
be  massacred,  as  is  written  in  the  Gospel 
according  to  St.  Matthew. 

The  soldiers  went  first  to  the  inn  of  the 
Green  Cabbage  and  to  the  barber's  cottage, 

314 


The  Massacre  of  the  Innocents 

which  stood  side  by  side,  midway  in  the 
street. 

One  of  them  opened  a  stable-door;  and  a 
litter  of  pigs  escaped  and  scattered  over 
the  village.  The  inn-keeper  and  the  bar- 
ber came  out  and  humbly  asked  the  sold- 
iers what  they  wanted;  but  the  men  knew 
no  Flemish  and  went  in  to  look  for  the 
children. 

The  inn-keeper  had  one,  which  sat  crying 
in  its  little  shirt  on  the  table  where  they 
had  just  had  dinner.  A  man  took  the  child 
in  his  arms  and  carried  it  away  under  the 
apple-tree,  while  the  father  and  mother  fol- 
lowed him  with  cries  of  lamentation. 

The  soldiers  also  threw  open  the  cooper's 
shed  and  the  blacksmith's  and  the  cob- 
bler's; and  the  calves,  cows,  asses,  pigs, 
goats  and  sheep  strayed  about  the  market- 
place. When  the  men  broke  the  glass  of 
the  carpenter's  windows,  several  of  the 
peasants,  including  the  oldest  and  richest 

3i5 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

farmers  in  the  parish,  assembled  in  the 
street  and  went  towards  the  Spaniards. 
They  doffed  their  hats  and  caps  respect- 
fully to  the  leader  in  his  velvet  cloak  and 
asked  him  what  he  was  going  to  do;  but 
even  he  did  not  understand  their  language; 
and  some  one  went  to  fetch  the  priest. 

He  was  making  ready  for  benediction 
and  putting  on  a  gold  cope  in  the  sacristy. 
The  peasant  called  out: 

"The  Spaniards  are  in  the  orchard  1" 

Horrified,  the  priest  ran  to  the  church- 
door,  accompanied  by  the  serving-boys 
carrying  tapers  and  censer. 

Then  he  saw  the  animals  released  from 
their  sheds  roaming  on  the  snow  and  the 
grass,  the  horsemen  in  the  village,  the  sold- 
iers outside  the  doors,  the  horses  tied  to 
the  trees  along  the  street  and  the  men  and 
women  entreating  him  who  was  holding 
the  child  in  its  shirt. 

He  rushed  to  the  churchyard;  and  the 

316 


The  Massacre  of  the  Innocents 

peasants  turned  anxiously  to  their  priest, 
coming  through  the  pear-trees  like  a  god 
robed  in  gold,  and  stood  around  him  and 
the  man  with  the  white  beard. 

He  spoke  in  Flemish  and  Latin ;  but  the 
commander  shrugged  his  shoulders  slowly 
up  and  down  to  show  that  he  did  not  un- 
derstand. 

His  parishioners  asked  him  under  their 
breath : 

"What  does  he  say?  What  is  he  going 
to  do?" 

Others,  on  seeing  the  priest  in  the  or- 
chard, came  timidly  from  their  farms;  the 
women  hurried  up  and  stood  whispering 
among  the  groups;  while  some  soldiers  who 
were  besieging  an  inn  ran  back  at  the  sight 
of  the  great  crowd  that  was  forming  in 
the  market-place. 

Then  the  man  who  was  holding  by  one 
leg  the  child  of  the  landlord  of  the  Green 
Cabbage  cut  off  its  head  with  his  sword. 

317 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

The  head  fell  before  their  eyes  and  the 
body  fell  after  it  and  lay  bleeding  on  the 
grass.  The  mother  picked  it  up  and  car- 
ried it  away,  leaving  the  head  behind  her. 
She  ran  towards  the  house,  but  stumbled 
against  a  tree  and  fell  flat  on  the  snow, 
where  she  lay  in  a  swoon,  while  the  father 
struggled  between  two  soldiers. 

Some  of  the  younger  peasants  threw 
stones  and  blocks  of  wood  at  the  Spaniards, 
but  the  horsemen  all  lowered  their  lances 
together,  the  women  fled  and  the  priest 
began  to  cry  out  in  horror  with  his  parish- 
ioners, all  among  the  sheep,  the  geese  and 
the  dogs. 

However,  as  the  soldiers  were  once  more 
moving  down  the  street,  the  folk  stood  si- 
lent to  see  what  they  would  do. 

The  band  entered  the  shop  kept  by  the 
sacristan's  sisters  and  then  came  out  quietly, 
without  harming  the  seven  women,  who 
knelt  on  the  doorstep  praying. 

318 


The  Massacre  of  the  Innocents 

Next  they  went  to  the  inn  owned  by  the 
Hunchback  of  St.  Nicholas.  Here  also 
the  door  was  opened  directly,  to  appease 
them;  but  they  reappeared  amid  a  great 
outcry,  with  three  children  in  their  arms 
and  surrounded  by  the  Hunchback,  his  wife 
and  his  daughters,  clasping  their  hands  in 
token  of  entreaty. 

On  reaching  the  old  man,  the  soldiers 
put  down  the  children  at  the  foot  of  an  elm, 
where  they  remained,  sitting  on  the  snow 
in  their  Sunday  clothes.  But  one  of  them, 
who  wore  a  yellow  frock,  rose  and  toddled 
towards  the  sheep.  A  man  ran  after  it 
with  his  naked  sword;  and  the  child  died 
with  its  face  in  the  grass,  while  the  others 
were  killed  not  far  from  the  tree. 

All  the  peasants  and  the  inn-keeper's 
daughters  took  to  flight,  shrieking  as  they 
went,  and  returned  to  their  homes.  The 
priest,  left  alone  in  the  orchard,  besought 
the  Spaniards  with  loud  cries,  going  on  his 

319 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

knees  from  horse  to  horse,  with  his  arms 
crossed  upon  his  breast,  while  the  father 
and  mother,  sitting  in  the  snow,  wept 
piteously  for  the  dead  children  that  lay  in 
their  laps. 

As  the  soldiers  ran  along  the  street,  they 
remarked  a  big  blue  farm-house.  They 
tried  to  break  down  the  door,  but  it  was 
of  oak  and  studded  with  nails.  Then  they 
took  some  tubs  that  were  frozen  in  a  pool 
in  front  of  the  house  and  used  them  to 
climb  to  the  upper  windows,  through  which 
they  made  their  way. 

There  had  been  a  kermis  at  this  farm; 
and  kinsfolk  had  come  to  eat  waffles,  ham 
and  custards  with  their  family.  At  the 
sound  of  the  broken  panes,  they  had  as- 
sembled behind  the  table  covered  with  jugs 
and  dishes.  The  soldiers  entered  the 
kitchen  and,  after  a  desperate  struggle, 
in  which  many  were  wounded,  they  seized 
the  little  boys  and  girls,  as  well  as  the  hind, 

320 


The  Massacre  of  the  Innocents 

who  had  bitten  a  soldier's  thumb.  Then 
they  left  the  house,  locking  the  door  behind 
them  to  prevent  the  inmates  from  going 
with  them. 

Those  of  the  villagers  who  had  no  child- 
ren slowly  left  their  homes  and  followed 
them  from  afar.  When  the  soldiers  carry- 
ing their  victims  came  to  the  old  man,  they 
threw  them  on  the  grass  and  deliberately 
killed  them  with  their  spears  and  their 
swords,  while  all  along  the  front  of  the 
blue  house  the  men  and  women  leant  out 
of  the  windows  of  the  upper  floor  and  the 
loft,  cursing  and  rocking  wildly  in  the  sun- 
shine at  the  sight  of  the  red,  pink  and  white 
frocks  of  their  little  ones  lying  motionless 
on  the  grass  among  the  trees.  Then  the 
soldiers  hanged  the  hind  from  the  sign  of 
the  Half  Moon  on  the  other  side  of  the 
street;  and  there  was  a  long  silence  in  the 
village. 

The   massacre   now   began    to   spread. 

321 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

Mothers  ran  out  of  the  houses  and  tried 
to  escape  to  the  open  country  through  the 
gardens  and  kitchen-plots;  but  the  horse- 
men scoured  after  them  and  drove  them 
back  into  the  street.  Peasants,  holding 
their  caps  in  their  clasped  hands,  followed 
upon  their  knees  the  men  who  were  drag- 
ging away  their  children,  among  the  dogs 
which  barked  deliriously  amid  the  din. 
The  priest,  with  his  arms  raised  aloft,  ran 
along  the  houses  and  under  the  trees,  pray- 
ing desperately,  like  a  martyr;  and  soldiers, 
shivering  with  cold,  blew  on  their  fingers 
as  they  moved  about  the  road,  or,  with 
their  hands  in  the  pockets  of  their  trunks 
and  their  swords  tucked  under  their  arms, 
waited  beneath  the  windows  of  the  houses 
that  were  being  scalecl. 

On  seeing  the  grief-stricken  terror  of  the 
peasants,  they  entered  the  farm-houses  in 
little  bands;  and  in  like  fashion  they  acted 
throughout  the  length  of  the  street. 

322 


The  Massacre  of  the  Innocents 

A  woman  who  sold  vegetables  in  the  old 
red-brick  cottage  near  the  church  seized  a 
chair  and  ran  after  two  men  who  were 
carrying  off  her  children  in  a  wheel-barrow. 
When  she  saw  them  die,  a  sickness  over- 
came her;  and  she  suffered  the  folk  to  press 
her  into  the  chair,  against  a  tree  by  the 
road-side. 

Other  soldiers  climbed  up  the  lime-trees 
in  front  of  a  house  painted  lilac  and  re- 
moved the  tiles  in  order  to  enter  the  house. 
When  they  came  out  again  upon  the  roof, 
the  father  and  mother,  with  outstretched 
arms,  also  appeared  in  the  opening;  and 
they  pushed  them  down  repeatedly,  cutting 
them  over  the  head  with  their  swords,  be- 
fore they  could  descend  into  the  street. 

One  family,  which  had  locked  itself  into 
the  cellar  of  a  rambling  cottage,  cried 
through  the  grating,  where  the  father  stood 
madly  brandishing  a  pitchfork.  An  old, 
bald-headed  man  was  sobbing  all  alone  on 

323 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

a  dung-heap ;  a  woman  in  yellow  had  faint- 
ed in  the  market-place  and  her  husband 
was  holding  her  under  her  arms  and 
moaning  in  the  shadow  of  a  pear-tree;  an- 
other, in  red,  was  kissing  her  little  girl, 
who  had  lost  her  hands,  and  lifting  first 
one  arm  and  then  the  other  to  see  if  she 
would  not  move.  Yet  another  ran  into  the 
country  and  the  soldiers  pursued  her 
through  the  hayricks  that  bounded  the 
snow-clad  fields. 

Beneath  the  inn  of  the  Four  Sons  of  Ay- 
mon  there  was  a  tumult  as  of  a  siege.  The 
inhabitants  had  barred  the  door;  and  the 
soldiers  went  round  and  round  the  house 
without  being  able  to  make  their  way  in. 
They  were  trying  to  clamber  up  to  the  sign 
by  the  fruit-trees  against  the  front  wall, 
when  they  caught  sight  of  a  ladder  behind 
the  garden-door.  They  set  it  against  the 
wall  and  mounted  one  after  the  other. 
Thereupon  the  landlord  and  all  his  house- 

324 


The  Massacre  of  the  Innocents 

hold  hurled  tables,  chairs,  dishes  and  cra- 
dles at  them  from  the  windows.  The  lad- 
der upset  and  the  soldiers  fell  down. 

In  a  wooden  hut,  at  the  end  of  the  vil- 
lage, another  band  found  a  peasant-woman 
bathing  her  children  in  a  tub  by  the  fire. 
Being  old  and  almost  deaf,  she  did  not 
hear  them  come  in.  Two  soldiers  took  the 
tub  and  carried  it  off ;  and  the  dazed  woman 
went  after  them,  with  the  children's 
clothes,  wanting  to  dress  them.  But,  when 
she  came  to  the  door  and  suddenly  saw 
the  splashes  of  blood  in  the  village,  the 
swords  in  the  orchard,  the  cradles  over- 
turned in  the  street,  women  on  their  knees 
and  women  waving  their  arms  around  the 
dead,  she  began  to  cry  out  with  all  her 
strength  and  to  strike  the  soldiers,  who  put 
down  the  tub  to  defend  themselves.  The 
priest  also  came  hastening  up  and,  folding 
his  hands  across  his  vestment,  entreated 
the  Spaniards  before  the  naked  children, 

325 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

who  were  whimpering  in  the  water.  Other 
soldiers  then  came  up  and  pushed  him  aside 
and  bound  the  raving  peasant-woman  to 
a  tree. 

The  butcher  had  hidden  his  little  daugh- 
ter and,  leaning  against  his  house,  looked 
on  in  unconcern.  A  foot-soldier  and  one 
of  the  men  in  armour  went  in  and  discover- 
ed the  child  in  a  copper  cauldron.  Then  the 
butcher,  in  desperation,  took  one  of  his 
knives  and  chased  them  down  the  street; 
but  a  band  that  was  passing  struck  the 
knife  from  his  grasp  and  hanged  him  by  the 
hands  to  the  hooks  in  his  wall,  among  the 
flayed  carcases,  where  he  twitched  his  legs 
and  jerked  his  head  and  cursed  and  swore 
till  evening. 

Near  the  churchyard,  a  crowd  had  as- 
sembled outside  a  long  green  farm-house. 
The  farmer  stood  on  his  threshold  weeping 
bitter  tears;  as  he  was  very  fat,  with  a 
face  made  for  smiling,  the  hearts  of  the 

326 


The  Massacre  of  the  Innocents 

soldiers  softened  in  some  measure  as  they 
sat  in  the  sun  with  their  backs  to  the  wall, 
listening  to  him  and  patting  his  dog  the 
while.  But  the  one  who  was  dragging  the 
child  away  by  the  hand  made  gestures  as 
though  to  say : 

"You  may  save  your  tears  !  It  is  not  my 
fault ! 

A  peasant  who  was  being  hotly  pursued 
sprang  into  a  boat  moored  to  the  stone 
bridge  and  pushed  across  the  pond  with  his 
wife  and  children.  The  soldiers,  not  dar- 
ing to  venture  on  the  ice,  strode  angrily 
through  the  reeds.  They  climbed  into  the 
willows  on  the  bank,  trying  to  reach  them 
with  their  spears;  and,  when  they  failed, 
continued  for  a  long  time  to  threaten  the 
family,  where  they  all  sat  cowering  in  the 
middle  of  the  water. 

Meanwhile,  the  orchard  was  still  full  of 
people,  for  it  was  there  that  most  of  the 
children  were  slain,  in  front  of  the  man  with 

327 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

the  white  beard  who  directed  the  massacre. 
The  little  boys  and  girls  who  were  big 
,  enough  to  walk  alone  also  collected 
there  and,  munching  their  bread-and-butter, 
stood  looking  on  curiously  to  see  the  others 
die  or  gathered  round  the  village  idiot, 
who  lay  upon  the  grass  playing  a  whistle. 

Then  suddenly  a  movement  ran  through 
the  length  of  the  village.  The  peasants 
were  turning  their  steps  toward  the  castle, 
standing  on  a  high  mound  of  yellow  earth 
at  the  end  of  the  street.  They  had  caught 
sight  of  the  lord  of  the  village  leaning  on 
the  battlements  of  his  tower,  watching  the 
massacre.  And  the  men,  women  and  old 
folk  stretched  out  their  arms  to  him  where 
he  sat  in  his  cloak  of  purple  velvet  and 
cap  of  gold  and  entreated  him  as  though 
he  were  a  king  in  heaven.  But  he  threw 
up  his  arms  and  shrugged  his  shoulders,  to 
show  his  helplessness;  and,  when  they  im- 
plored him  in  ever-increasing  anguish  and 

328 


The  Massacre  of  the  Innocents 

knelt  bareheaded  in  the  snow,  uttering  loud 
cries,  he  turned  back  slowly  into  the  tower; 
and  in  the  hearts  of  the  peasants  all  hope 
died. 

When  all  the  children  were  killed,  the 
tired  soldiers  wiped  their  swords  on  the 
grass  and  supped  under  the  pear-trees. 
Then  the  foot-soldiers  mounted  behind  the 
others  and  they  all  rode  out  of  Nazareth 
together,  by  the  stone  bridge,  as  they  had 
come. 

The  setting  sun  lit  the  forest  with  a  red 
light  and  painted  the  village  a  new  colour. 
Weary  with  running  and  entreating,  the 
priest  had  sat  down  in  the  snow  in  front 
of  the  church;  and  his  servant-maid  stood 
near  him,  looking  around.  They  saw  the 
street  and  the  orchard  filled  with  peasants 
in  their  holiday  attire,  moving  about  the 
market-place  and  along  the  houses.  Out- 
side the  doors,  families,  with  their  dead 
children  on  their  knees,  whispered  in  amaze- 

329 


The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

ment  and  horror  of  the  fate  wherewith 
they  had  been  assailed.  Others  were  still 
mourning  the  child  where  it  had  fallen,  near 
a  cask,  under  a  barrow  or  at  a  puddle's 
edge,  or  were  carrying  it  away  in  silence. 
Several  were  already  washing  the  benches, 
chairs,  tables  and  shirts  all  smirched  with 
blood  and  picking  up  the  cradles  that  had 
been  flung  into  the  street.  But  nearly  all 
the  mothers  were  kneeling  on  the  grass 
under  the  trees,  before  the  dead  bodies, 
which  they  knew  by  their  woollen  frocks. 
Those  who  had  no  children  were  roaming 
about  the  market-place,  stopping  to  gaze 
at  the  afflicted  groups.  The  men  who  had 
done  weeping  took  the  dogs  and  started  in 
pursuit  of  their  strayed  beasts,  or  mended 
their  broken  windows  or  gaping  roofs, 
while  the  village  grew  hushed  and  still  be- 
neath the  light  of  the  moon  as  it  rose  slowly 
in  the  sky. 

THE    END 

330 


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